“It’s a wonderful idea.  How do you prepare the thing?”

“Load it—­simply load it.”

“How?”

“Why you just stand over it and swear into it.”

“That loads it, does it?”

“Yes—­because every word it collars, it keeps—­keeps it forever.  Never wears out.  Any time you turn the crank, out it’ll come.  In times of great peril, you can reverse it, and it’ll swear backwards.  That makes a sailor hump himself!”

“O, I see.  Who loads them?—­the mate?”

“Yes, if he chooses.  Or I’ll furnish them already loaded.  I can hire an expert for $75 a month who will load a hundred and fifty phonographs in 150 hours, and do it easy.  And an expert can furnish a stronger article, of course, than the mere average uncultivated mate could.  Then you see, all the ships of the world will buy them ready loaded—­for I shall have them loaded in any language a customer wants.  Hawkins, it will work the grandest moral reform of the 19th century.  Five years from now, all the swearing will be done by machinery—­you won’t ever hear a profane word come from human lips on a ship.  Millions of dollars have been spent by the churches, in the effort to abolish profanity in the commercial marine.  Think of it—­my name will live forever in the affections of good men as the man, who, solitary and alone, accomplished this noble and elevating reform.”

“O, it is grand and beneficent and beautiful.  How did you ever come to think of it?  You have a wonderful mind.  How did you say you loaded the machine?”

“O, it’s no trouble—­perfectly simple.  If you want to load it up loud and strong, you stand right over it and shout.  But if you leave it open and all set, it’ll eavesdrop, so to speak—­that is to say, it will load itself up with any sounds that are made within six feet of it.  Now I’ll show you how it works.  I had an expert come and load this one up yesterday.  Hello, it’s been left open—­it’s too bad—­still I reckon it hasn’t had much chance to collect irrelevant stuff.  All you do is to press this button in the floor—­so.”

The phonograph began to sing in a plaintive voice: 

          There is a boarding-house, far far away,
          Where they have ham and eggs, 3 times a day.

“Hang it, that ain’t it.  Somebody’s been singing around here.”

The plaintive song began again, mingled with a low, gradually rising wail of cats slowly warming up toward a fight;

          O, how the boarders yell,
          When they hear that dinner bell
          They give that landlord—­

(momentary outburst of terrific catfight which drowns out one word.)

          Three times a day.

(Renewal of furious catfight for a moment.  The plaintive voice on a high fierce key, “Scat, you devils”—­and a racket as of flying missiles.)

“Well, never mind—­let it go.  I’ve got some sailor-profanity down in there somewhere, if I could get to it.  But it isn’t any matter; you see how the machine works.”