To take the telephone alone, surely the romance of Pyramus and Thisbe, with their primitive hole in the wall, was a tame affair compared with the possibilities of this magic toy, by means of which you can talk with your love not merely through a wall but through the Rocky Mountains.  You can whisper sweet nothings to her across the sounding sea, and bid her “sleep well” over leagues of primeval forest, and through the stoniest-hearted city her soft voice will find its way.  Even in mid-ocean the “wireless” will bring you news of her mal-de-mer.  And more than that; should you wish to carry her voice with you from place to place, science is once more at your service with another magic toy—­the phonograph—­by which indeed she can still go on speaking to you, if you have the courage to listen, from beyond the grave.

The telegraph, the telephone, the “wireless,” the phonograph, the electric letter writer—­such are the modern “conveniences” of romance; and, should an elopement be on foot, what are the fastest post-chaise or the fleetest horses compared with a high-powered automobile?  And when the airship really comes, what romance that has ever been will compare for excitement with an elopement through the sky?

Apart from the practical conveniences of these various new devices, there is a poetic quality about the mere devices themselves which is full of fascination and charm.  Whether we call up our sweetheart or our stockbroker, what a thing of enchantment the telephone is merely in itself!  Such devices turn the veriest prose of life into poetry; and, indeed, the more prosaic the uses to which we put them, the more marvellous by contrast their marvel seems.  Even our businesses are carried on by agencies more mysterious and truly magical than anything in the Arabian Nights, and all day long we are playing with mysterious natural laws and exquisite natural forces as, in a small way, when boys we used to delight in our experiments with oxygen and hydrogen and Leyden jars.  Science has thus brought an element of romantic “fun,” so to speak, even into our stores and our counting-houses.  I wonder if “Central” realizes what a truly romantic employment is hers?

But, pressed into the high service of love, one sees at once what a poetic fitness there is in their employ, and how our much-abused modern science has found at last for that fastidious god an appropriately dignified and beautiful ministrant.  Coarse and vulgar indeed seem the ancient servitors and the uncouth machinery by which the divine business of the god was carried on of old.  Today, through the skill of science, the august lightning has become his messenger, and the hidden gnomes of air and sea hasten to do his bidding.

Modern science, then, so far from being an enemy of romance, is seen on every hand to be its sympathetic and resourceful friend, its swift and irresistible helper in its serious need, and an indulgent minister to its lighter fancies.  Be it whim or emergency, the modern laboratory is equally at the service of romance, equally ready to gratify mankind with a torpedo or a toy.