When we got that settled and the pundits began to drift away to other plate-glass rooms along the mile, more or less, of corridor devoted to officials' offices, I became interested in a little wooden box which stood upon the president's large flat-top desk. I was told it was a dictagraph. Never having seen a dictagraph before, and being something of a child, I wished to play with it as I used to play with typewriters and letter-presses in my father's office years ago. And the president of this many-million-dollar corporation, being a kindly man with, of course, absolutely nothing to do but to supply itinerant scribes with playthings, let me toy with the machine. Sitting at the desk, he pressed a key. Then, without changing his position, he spoke into the air: "Fred," he said, "there's some one here who wants to ask you a question." Then the little wooden box began to talk. "What does he want to ask about?" it said. That put it up to me. I had to think of something to ask. I was conscious of a strange, unpleasant feeling of being hurried--of having to reply quickly before something happened--some breaking of connections. I leaned toward the machine, but the president waved me back: "Just sit over there where you are." Then I said: "I am writing articles about Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit. How would you compare them?" "Well," replied the Fred-in-the-box, "I used to live in Cleveland. I've been here four years and I wouldn't want to go back." After that we paused. I thought I ought to say something more to the box, but I didn't know just what. "Is that all you want to know?" it asked. "Yes," I replied hurriedly. "I'm much obliged. That's all I want to know." Of course it really wasn't all--not by any means! But I couldn't bring myself to say so then, so I said the easy, obvious thing, and after that it was too late. Oh, how many things there are I want to know! How many things I think of now which I would ask an oracle when there is none to ask! Things about the here and the hereafter; about the human spirit; about practical religion, the brotherhood of man, the inequalities of men, evolution, reform, the enduring mysteries of space, time, eternity, and woman! A friend of mine--a spiritualist--once told me of a séance in which he thought himself in brief communication with his mother. There were a million things to say. But when the medium requested him to give a message he could only falter: "Are you all right over there?" The answer came: "Yes, all right." Then my friend said: "I'm so glad!" And that was all. "It is the feeling of awful pressure," he explained to me, "which drives the thoughts out of your head. That is why so many messages from the spirit world sound silly and inconsequential. You have the one great chance to communicate with them, and, because it _is_ your one great chance, you cannot think of anything to say." Somehow I imagine that the feeling must be like the one I had in talking to the dictagraph.