"This magnet is connected by this wire with another magnet that also has a coil of wire around it. On the other side of the second magnet is the other thin plate of sheet iron. This last part makes what I call the receiver. It is the part at which you listened. It looks, you see, like a metallic pill box with a flat disc for a cover, fastened down at one side and tilted up on another. When you put your ear to that, you heard the reproduction of the original sound." "Marvelous!" "Wonderful!" "Stupendous!" "Incredible!" were some of the exclamations. "But, gentlemen," confirmed one of the judges, a man named Elisha Gray, "it is perfectly true. I myself have an invention of a similar sort, by which I can send musical sounds along a telegraph wire." There was a moment of amazement and congratulation for Mr. Gray. Then came a question addressed to Mr. Bell. "Could you talk into the iron box and hear at the transmitter?" "Yes, but not easily. So far I have had to use different instruments at each end of the circuit. I shall remedy that some day," continued Mr. Bell, confidently. "I am sure you will," agreed the questioner. "We want to see this again, sir," spoke one of the group. "May it not be transferred to the Judges' Hall?" "Certainly, as far as I am concerned," was the reply. "Mr. Hubbard will see to that, I am sure. I myself must return to Boston to-night." "My young friend," now spoke Sir William Thomson (who later became Lord Kelvin), perhaps the most noted of all the scientists present, "is it not possible to arrange for a test with your apparatus over a considerable distance? If so, I shall be glad to go to Boston also to witness such an experiment." "I shall be most delighted, Sir William," answered Bell. "I will make the necessary arrangements and telegraph you at once." After more congratulations for the young inventor, the group dispersed, the judges going away to the dinner they had for a while forgotten. But during the meal and through the evening they talked of little but the new invention; and Arthur distinctly remembers to this day the enthusiastic remark of Sir William Thomson: "What yesterday I should have declared impossible I have to-day seen realized. The speaking telegraph is the most wonderful thing I have seen in America." PART II When Arthur went back to his home in one of the country towns of Massachusetts, he had many things to tell his family and his friends. To him the Exposition had been a veritable fairy land. But the most wonderful genie there was Electricity, and his most remarkable work was the speaking telegraph. "And you could really hear through that wire?" questioned more than one incredulous person. "I really could, and as plainly as I hear you," insisted Arthur. "Sho, now!" remonstrated a farmer neighbor, "you only thought you could." "Well, maybe," commented another, cautiously, "but of course there was a hole in the wire that you didn't see."