The Sort of Life We Lead 37 



even in its present crude shape, that when scores 

 of inventors have had time to work at it, its per- 

 formances will be nothing short of miraculous. In 

 music, especially, it seems always to have excelled. 

 The first of the Edison phonographs, which were 

 admittedly toys, so far as talking is concerned, re- 

 produced singing, violin playing, whistling, with 

 extraordinary fidelity. The later instrument of to- 

 day gives out a piano piece so that not only all the 

 notes are heard as if the piano was in the next 

 room, but even the overtones and the after-vibra- 

 tions of the strings are distinct. Inasmuch as it 

 will cost scarcely anything to make duplicates of 

 the wax cylinders bearing upon them music, it will 

 pay to take great pains and go to heavy expense in 

 order to obtain an original cylinder which gives re- 

 sults as perfect as possible. Rubinstein may well 

 devote himself to playing into huge sounding fun- 

 nels, if he knows that duplicates of the little wax 

 cylinder at the other end of the funnel are to be 

 distributed all over the civilized world, and that 

 millions of people now, and perhaps a thousand 

 years from now, will listen to an echo of his work. 

 This feature of the certain and almost costless re- 

 production of these cylinders will cause the search 

 for a sound-magnifier to begin again in earnest. 



