Arrived at my hotel, I was at once struck with its extreme quietness, more so as the apartments were all but taken by some thousands of travellers. The cause of this, however, I soon discovered on entering the elegant and spacious conversation room. Methought I heard a kind of music, feeble, yet melodious in the extreme. The sound approached as near as possible that of the human voice; but still the quality was altogether different. Besides, no artist, male or female, was to be seen in the room. The only clue that I could get to the mystery was through a box of small dimensions; this instrument was placed on a table right in the centre of the room, and thence the sound appeared to proceed. Taking the affair to be an ordinary musical-box, worked in the usual way, I gazed with no little contempt and surprise upon the crowd of serious-looking, enthusiastic men and women who had clustered round the table. As soon as the music ceased, I ventured to approach the spectators, at the same time asking one among the crowd for some information with regard to the musical instrument in which they all seemed to be so much interested. Oh the number of pairs of eyes that stared at me, full of amazement, if not of indignation! At last one of the enthusiasts condescended to break the silence, "What, sir, a musical instrument! where did you ever know such tones to proceed from a musical instrument? Surely, sir, as a gentleman you must have heard of the telephon?" I now remembered that a machine bearing that name, and answering that description, had been invented as far back as 1861 by a certain Reis; also that it was based upon the following law, as discovered and laid down by Page; namely, that when an electric current passes through a wire coiled round an iron bar, and the current is continually interrupted, there arises a sound or a tone, the height or depth of which is entirely dependent on the number of vibrations produced by the interruptions of the current, according to their succeeding each other with more or less velocity. This recurring to my mind, I now replied that the telephon was indeed not quite unfamiliar to me, in proof of which I went back to the history of its first invention; I also gave a description of Reis' little instrument, by which the sound of the human voice could be transmitted through very great distances; and finally, I added my surmise or natural conviction that such an instrument must have been considerably improved upon in the course of more than two centuries. [10] I was happy to notice the excellent impression visibly produced by my words; there now arose a tolerably general murmur of "whoever now would have taken the telephon to be so old an affair?" As for me, I was complimented on my antiquarian knowledge, and, thanks to the amiable disposition of the visitors towards me, I was not long in discovering what had been going on. That which every one now was so anxious to explain to me amounted, in a few words, to this.