A Case in Camera

ed its action upon myself. My connection with it was slight by comparison with that of some of the others, but I was aware of its o

in with the children from the garden again; at home my page of manuscript would blur and there in a doorway Philip Esdaile would stand, his eyes dancing with a stilly excitement, the cura?ao and the candle once more in his hands. And this, in my curious trade, is a serious matter. Out of precisely these insubstantialities I have to contrive to pay my rent and income-tax and to provide my bread-and-butter. I will not go so far as to

Technical and Scientific Exhibition of some sort, and I had thought I had seen Hubbard's white-topped cap and foursqua

slowly turning the handle of an instrument that at a first glance resembled an overgrown typewriter. Hubbard was peering into the mechanism.

coming up. "May o

here?" was his greeting. Then to the atte

it, the page travels along the carriage in such a way that each letter in turn passes over a tiny ray of light that is directed through a morsel of selenium. The letter causes an interruption; a lower-case "l," for example, which is a straight line, making one kind of break, but an "i," whi

d come upon him examining such a thing as this optophone seemed to be; but our talk did not begin with that. Leaving the instrument, we turned away

he said again cheerfully. "It's a

e clowning for the Circus, and added that it was precisely the sam

as out of your line," he repl

of the afternoon; he always talked better over lunch at Simpson's, with a Bronx or a Martini to start off with. Failing these, there was nothing for it but a cup of tea to wash down

end Chummy away," I observed wh

"Queer business that, wasn't it? H

er at a disadvantage in not knowing yo

at, for

you can't go far

ste" that sent him off into a reverie. The young creature who played the fiddle had bobbed hair and was rather an attrac

about Hubbard is that he usually knows what you want to know, and does n

e like the wind-blows whither it listeth. You look for it where you'd expect it and

me of my own Publicity conclusion

plied off-handedly. "I suppose you writer-fellows call it genius.... How old's Smith? Twenty-four I should say

about

n. What it's for, just as muc

remember I'm

ut a good many people seem to be trying to think there's never been one. That's right enough from the economic po

do you wan

le's studio rested on my face again no

express-letters, are you? Or carrying a cheap-jack Bradford agent to make a dicker in wool? That's where so many of you newsp

e. The public, its interests and its co

n," I

re are two points, as a matter of fact. One's the training of your men, and the other's continuity of manufacture. If this country forgets either of 'em it may as well chuck its hand in. Why," he exclaimed in a phrase that arrested me in a quite remarkable way as chiming in so exactly with my own private observations, "look at the Elizabethans! Wh

s why I think that all our print is dead and cold until it is vivified by the heard and passionate voice. Oh, I know the stock argument-that for one that is reached by the human voice a thousand are influenced by the printed word. Well, so they are, until a contradictory word is printed and both messages jam to a standsti

m were youngsters. While old Burleigh was nodding, some infant just out of his cradle was getting away with it. At all events

Smith's like that

to one finite and fallible human being. Even the pentecostal flame may flicker at times. But I noticed that Hubbard did not

hey?" he said. "Wish I