The Terrors of the Phonogram.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 838, 23 March 1888, Page 4

The Terrors of the Phonogram.

The phonogram adds a new terror to life. Mr Edison threatens to make it so cheap that, as the advertisements say, ‘no household should be without it.’ What we shall do when the dreadful things become articles of daily domestic use it is impossible to say. No husband will feel safe in scolding his wife auy longer if the exuberance of his haste cau be ‘turned on 3 against him in his calmer moments. Mrs Caudle's pleasure in the delivery of her curtain lecture will be gone for ever when she knows that by a little management Mr Caudle will be in a position to have it all repeated for the edification of the whole family at the breakfast table next morning. The new ourate, with his highpitched voice and his pretty little poetical vapidities, will be ready to rush down the pulpit- stairs with mental fright at the mere suspicion of a wicked schoolboy putting his band anywhere near his waistcoat pocket. Dear Edv> in will no longer venture to whisper his beautiful messages of love into the ears of his adored Angelina in the drawing-room, lest that dreadful imp, her brother, should have surreptitiously placed a couple of phonograms in the neighborhood, and should bring out the conversation by instalments at any moment in the day. Nobody will feel in the least degree safe. Even a chairman of Quarter Sessions may sometimes forget that he is the representative of that science which is the perfection of reason, and give utterance to the ‘ mere common-places 3 of social life like an ordinary man. What if the phonogram should catch up any of these, and at some moment when magisterial wisdom is at its solemnest should announce, in tones entirely bereft of magisterial pomp and dignity, that ‘ the beefsteak is a little tough, Mrs Trimley, 3 or, ‘I think you had better get me a new woollen nightcap ; the weather is getting cold !’ Imagine the condition of the brother magistrates at such an occurrence, or the still more alarming state of the assembled bucolics, to whom the chairman is a far more majestic person than any queen or king could by any possibility be. There is ooly one further discovery wanted to make life absolutely not worth living. Let Mr Edison invent a machine which will correctly read and reproduce our thoughts, and then we will all with one consent give it up in despair.—The Hospital.