Johan has just come home from Boston, bringing incredible stories about having talked in a machine called telephone. It was nothing but a wire, one end in Boston and the other end in Cambridge. He said he could hear quite plainly what the person in Cambridge said. Mr. Graham Bell, our neighbor, has invented this. How wonderful it must be! He has put up wires about Boston, but not farther than Cambridge--yet. He was ambitious enough to suggest Providence. "What!" cried the members of the committee. "You think you can talk along a wire in the air over that distance?" "Let me just try it," said Bell. "I will bear half the expense of putting up the wire if you will bear the other half."
He was ultra-convinced of his success when, on talking to his brother in Cambridge from Boston in order to invite him to dinner, adding, "Bring your mother-in-law," he heard, distinctly but feebly, the old lady's voice: "Good gracious! Again! What a bore!"
There is also another invention, called phonograph, where the human voice is reproduced, and can go on for ever being reproduced. I sang in one through a horn, and they transposed this on a platina roll and wound it off. Then they put it on another disk, and I heard my voice--for the first time in my life. If that is my voice, I don't want to hear it again! I could not believe that it could be so awful! A high, squeaky, nasal sound; I was ashamed of it. And the faster the man turned the crank the higher and squeakier the voice became. The intonation--the pronunciation--I could recognize as my own, but the _voice_!... Dear me!
[_Johan, desiring me to know his family, suggested that we spend the Christmas holidays in Denmark, and we arrived safely after a slow and very stormy voyage._]
Dear Mother,--Denmark looks very friendly under its mantle of snow, glistening with its varnish of ice. It is lovely weather. The sun shines brightly, but it is as cold as Greenland. They tell me it is a very mild winter. Compared with Alaska, it may be! The house, which is heated only by large porcelain stoves, is particularly cold. These stoves are filled with wood in the early morning, and when the wood is burned out they shut the door and the porcelain tiles retain the heat--still, the ladies all wear shawls over their shoulders and shiver. I go and lean my back up against the huge white monument, but this is not considered good form.
