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Then we took the cylinder to a type-writer in the next room, and she
put the hooks into her ears and wrote the whole out. I send you the
result. There is a mistake of one word. I think that if you have
the cheek to dictate the story into the fonograf, all the rest is
perfectly easy. It wouldn't fatigue me to talk for an hour as I
did."
Clemens did not find the phonograph entirely satisfactory, at least
not for a time, and he appears never to have used it steadily. His
early experience with it, however, seems interesting.
*
****
To W. D. Howells, in Boston:
HARTFORD, Apl. 4, '91.
DEAR HOWELLS,--I'm ashamed. It happened in this way. I was proposing to
acknowledge the receipt of the play and the little book per phonograph,
so that you could see that the instrument is good enough for mere
letter-writing; then I meant to add the fact that you can't write
literature with it, because it hasn't any ideas and it hasn't any gift
for elaboration, or smartness of talk, or vigor of action, or felicity
of expression, but is just matter-of-fact, compressive, unornamental,
and as grave and unsmiling as the devil.
792
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