“I do,” said Spinrobin.  It trembled like a living thing.

“Now,” continued Mr. Skale, after a pause, “what I first want is to receive the vibrations of your own voice in the same way—­into my very pulses.  Kindly read aloud steadily while I hold it.  Stop reading when I make a sign.  I’ll nod, so that the vibrations of my voice won’t interfere.”  And he handed a notebook to him with quotations entered neatly in his own handwriting, selected evidently with a purpose, and all dealing with sound, music, as organized sound, and names.  Spinrobin read aloud; the first quotation from Meredith he recognized, but the others, and the last one, discussing names, were new to him:—­

“But listen in the thought; so may there come
Conception of a newly-added chord,
Commanding space beyond where ear has home.

“Everything that the sun shines upon sings or can be made to sing, and can be heard to sing.  Gases, impalpable powders, and woolen stuffs, in common with other non-conductors of sound, give forth notes of different pitches when played upon by an intermittent beam of white light.  Colored stuffs will sing in lights of different colors, but refuse to sing in others.  The polarization of light being now accomplished, light and sound are known to be alike.  Flames have a modulated voice and can be made to sing a definite melody.  Wood, stone, metal, skins, fibers, membranes, every rapidly vibrating substance, all have in them the potentialities of musical sound.

“Radium receives its energy from, and responds to, radiations which traverse all space—­as piano strings respond to sounds in unison with their notes.  Space is all a-quiver with waves of radiant energy.  We vibrate in sympathy with a few strings here and there—­with the tiny X-rays, actinic rays, light waves, heat waves, and the huge electromagnetic waves of Hertz and Marconi; but there are great spaces, numberless radiations, to which we are stone deaf.  Some day, a thousand years hence, we shall know the full sweep of this magnificent harmony.

“Everything in nature has its name, and he who has the power to call a thing by its proper name can make it subservient to his will; for its proper name is not the arbitrary name given to it by man, but the expression of the totality of its powers and attributes, because the powers and attributes of each Being are intimately connected with its means of expression, and between both exists the most exact proportion in regard to measure, time, and condition.”

The meaning of the four quotations, as he read them, plunged down into him and touched inner chords very close to his own beliefs.  Something of his own soul, therefore, passed into his voice as he read.  He read, that is to say, with authority.