have you been eating?"

"What's that?" I asked, putting my hand on the keys.

"That's keys," was the answer.

"And these, and that?" I added, indicating the type and the bell.

"Type and bell," replied the machine.

"And yet you say you haven't got them," I persisted.

"No, I haven't. The machine has got them, not I," was the response. "I'm
not the machine. I'm the man that's using it--Jim--Jim Boswell. What
good would a bell do me? I'm not a cow or a bicycle. I'm the editor of
the Stygian Gazette, and I've come here to copy off my notes of what I
see and hear, and besides all this I do type-writing for various people
in Hades, and as this machine of yours seemed to be of no use to you I
thought I'd try it. But if you object, I'll go."

As I read these lines upon the paper I stood amazed and delighted.

"Go!" I cried, as the full value of his patronage of my machine dawned
upon me, for I could sell his copy and he would be none the worse
off, for, as I understand the copyright laws, they are not designed to
benefit authors, but for the protection of type-setters. "Why, my dear
fellow, it would break my heart if, having found my machine to your
taste, you should ever think of using another. I'll lend you my bicycle,
too, if you'd like it--in fact, anything I have is at your command."

"Thank you very much," returned Boswell through the medium of the keys,
as usual. "I shall not need your bicycle, but this machine is of great
value to me. It has several very remarkable qualities which I have
never found in any other machine. For instance, singular to relate,
Mendelssohn and I were fooling about here the other night, and when he
saw this machine he thought it was a spinet of some new pattern; so what
does he do but sit down and play me one of his songs without words on
it, and, by jove! when he got through, there was the theme of the whole
thing printed on a sheet of paper before him."

"You don't really mean to say--" I began.

"I'm telling you precisely what happened," said Boswell. "Mendelssohn
was tickled to death with it, and he played every song without words
that he ever wrote, and every one of 'em was fitted with words which he
said absolutely conveyed the ideas he meant to bring out with the music.
Then I tried the machine, and discovered another curious thing about
it. It's intensely American. I had a story of Alexander Dumas' about his
Musketeers that he wanted translated from French into American, wh