THE PHONOGRAPH cxxxi 



take raffle tickets ; and one of the phonographs was finally dis- 

 posed of in this way.' The other remained in Fleeming's hands, 

 and was a source of infinite occupation. Once it was sent to 

 London, ' to bring back on the tinfoil the tones of a lady dis- 

 tinguished for clear vocalisation ' ; at another time ' Sir Robert 

 Christison was brought in to contribute his powerful bass ' ; 

 and there scarcely came a visitor about the house, but he was 

 made the subject of experiment. The visitors, I am afraid, 

 took their parts lightly : Mr. Hole and I, with unscientific 

 laughter, commemorating various shades of Scotch accent, or 

 proposing to ' teach the poor dumb animal to swear.' But 

 Fleeming and Mr. Ewing, when we butterflies were gone, were 

 laboriously ardent. Many thoughts that occupied the later years 

 of my friend were caught from the small utterance of that toy. 

 Thence came his inquiries into the roots of articulate language 

 and the foundations of literary art ; his papers on vowel sounds, 

 his papers in the Saturday Review upon the laws of verse, and 

 many a strange approximation, many a just note, thrown out 

 in talk and now forgotten. I pass over dozens of his interests, 

 and dwell on this trifling matter of the phonograph, because 

 it seems to me that it depicts the man. So, for Fleeming, 

 one thing joined into another, the greater with the less. He 

 cared not where it was he scratched the surface of the ultimate 

 mystery in the child's toy, in the great tragedy, in the laws 

 of the tempest, or in the properties of energy or mass certain 

 that whatever he touched, it was a part of life and however 

 he touched it, there would flow for his happy constitution in- 

 terest and delight. ' All fables have their morals,' says Thoreau, 

 c but the innocent enjoy the story.' There is a truth repre- 

 sented for the imagination in these lines of a noble poem, where 

 we are told, that in our highest hours of visionary clearness, we 

 can but 



1 see the children sport upon the shore 

 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.' 



To this clearness Fleeming had attained; and although he 

 heard the voice of the eternal seas and weighed its message, 



