ll simplified enough for commercial purposes! And another
month will do it!"

"But eight months ago you said that!"

"There's nothing left to stick us _now_. Once I get this cell the way I
want it, we'll start manufacturing, for all we're worth. In less than
six months we'll be filling contracts here in America. Two months later
we'll be introducing into seven different countries in Europe a fully
protected and patented transmitting camera as far ahead of the
old-fashioned photophone as a Bell telephone is ahead of a tin
speaking-tube."

"I know, Jim; but you must be more careful! You must, in some way, stop
working so hard!"

"Who could help it, at this sort of work?" he protested, contentedly.
She felt that he, too, had stumbled upon that timeless and mysterious
paradox of existence, that incongruous law which ordains that as one
surrenders and relinquishes and gives, so one shall live the richer and
deeper.

"I tell you, Frank," her husband was saying, "the more I know of
electricity the more I bow down before it, in wonder, the prouder I am to
be mixed up in its mysteries! Just think of what it's come to be, this
thing we call Electricity, since the day primitive man first rubbed a
piece of amber and beheld the puny miracle of magnetic attraction! Why,
today it harnesses tides and waterfalls, and tames and orders force, and
leaves power docile and patient, swinging meek and ready from a bit of
metal thread! It lightens cities, at a turn of the wrist; it hurls your
voice half way round the world, it guides sailors and measures and weighs
the stars; it threads empires together with its humming wires; it's the
shuttle that's woven all civilization into one compact fabric! It's the
light of our night-time, and the civilizer of our world. It explodes
mines, and heals sickness. It creeps as silent as death through a
thousand miles of sea, and yet it's the very tongue of our world! It
prints and carves and beautifies; it rises to the most stupendous tasks,
and then it stoops to the most delicate work!"

"And it lets me ring you up, my beloved own, and hear your voice, your
living voice!" Even beyond her laughter he could catch the rapt note as
she spoke. He responded to that note by catching at her gloved hand, and
keeping it in his gratefully.

"Yes, but it does even more than annihilate space and turn wheels and
despatch trains. Think what it's doing with wireless alone! And _that_
is only the be