if
the prompter at the performance of a drama were to be seen taking the
most conspicuous part and mixing among the actors upon the stage. If
an orchestral piece be well played without the visible presence of a
conductor, the sense of correct time reaches the audience naturally
through the music itself; and any sort of gesticulations intended to
mark it are under these conditions regarded as being out of place.

The foremost orchestral conductors of the day are evidently impressed
with this unfitness of the mechanical marking of time by the wild
waving of a stick or swaying of the body; and accordingly, however
much they exert themselves at the rehearsal, they purposely subdue
their motions during a public performance. The time is not far
distant when the object of the conductor will be to guide his band
without permitting his promptings to be perceived in any way by the
audience.

For this purpose an "electric beat-indicator" will prove useful.
Various proposals for its application have been put forward, and for
different purposes several of them are obviously feasible. For
instance, in one system the conductor sits in a place hidden from the
audience and beats time on an electric contact-maker, which admits of
his sending a special message to any particular performer whenever he
desires to do so. The signal which marks the time may be given to each
performer, either visually by a beater concealed within a small
bell-shaped cavity affixed to his desk or to his electric light; or it
may be conveyed by the sense of touch through a mechanical beater
within a small metal weight placed on the floor and upon which he sets
one of his feet.

The electric time-beater in the latter system thus taps the measure
gently on the sole of the performer's foot, and special signals, as
may be arranged, are sent to him by preconcerted combinations of taps.
The absence of any distraction from the music itself will soon be
gratefully felt by audiences, and the playing of a symphony in the
twentieth century, in which the whole orchestra moves sympathetically
in obedience to the "nerve-waves" of the electric current, will be the
highest possible presentment of the musical art.

CHAPTER XIII.

ART AND NEWS.

The production of pictures for the million will be practically the
highest achievement of the graphic art in the twentieth century. Many
eminent painters do not at al