Smith
this morning was not niggard of blessings for the inventor, when by its
aid he was able distinctly to see his wife notwithstanding the distance
that separated him from her. Mrs. Smith, weary after the ball or the
visit to the theater the preceding night, is still abed, though it is
near noontide at Paris. She is asleep, her head sunk in the lace-covered
pillows. What? She stirs? Her lips move. She is dreaming perhaps? Yes,
dreaming. She is talking, pronouncing a name his name--Fritz! The
delightful vision gave a happier turn to Mr. Smith's thoughts. And now,
at the call of imperative duty, light-hearted he springs from his bed
and enters his mechanical dresser.

Two minutes later the machine deposited him all dressed at the threshold
of his office. The round of journalistic work was now begun. First he
enters the hall of the novel-writers, a vast apartment crowned with an
enormous transparent cupola. In one corner is a telephone, through which
a hundred Earth Chronicle _litterateurs_ in turn recount to the public
in daily installments a hundred novels. Addressing one of these authors
who was waiting his turn, "Capital! Capital! my dear fellow," said he,
"your last story. The scene where the village maid discusses interesting
philosophical problems with her lover shows your very acute power of
observation. Never have the ways of country folk been better portrayed.
Keep on, my dear Archibald, keep on! Since yesterday, thanks to you,
there is a gain of 5000 subscribers."

"Mr. John Last," he began again, turning to a new arrival, "I am not so
well pleased with your work. Your story is not a picture of life; it
lacks the elements of truth. And why? Simply because you run straight on
to the end; because you do not analyze. Your heroes do this thing or
that from this or that motive, which you assign without ever a thought
of dissecting their mental and moral natures. Our feelings, you must
remember, are far more complex than all that. In real life every act is
the resultant of a hundred thoughts that come and go, and these you must
study, each by itself, if you would create a living character. 'But,'
you will say, 'in order to note these fleeting thoughts one must know
them, must be able to follow them in their capricious meanderings.' Why,
any child can do that, as you know. You have simply to make use of
hypnotism, electrical or human, which gives one a two-fold being,
setting free the witness-personality so that it