At all events, this Galla, or Bedouin, with his
grotesque interest in my doings, restrained my hands: and, finally, by
dint of peering, poking, dusting, and adjusting, in an hour's time I got
the phonograph to go very well.
And all that morning, and far into late afternoon, forgetful of food,
and of the cold which gradually possessed me, I sat there listening,
musing--cylinder after cylinder: frivolous songs, orchestras, voices of
famous men whom I had spoken with, and shaken their solid hands,
speaking again to me, but thick-tongued, with hoarse effort and
gurgles, from out the vague void beyond the grave: most strange, most
strange. And the third cylinder that I put on, ah, I knew, with a
fearful start, that voice of thunder, I knew it well: it was the
preacher, Mackay's; and many, many times over I heard those words of his
that day, originally spoken, it seems, when the cloud had just passed
the longitude of Vienna; and in all that torrent of speech not one
single word of 'I told you so': but he cries:
'.
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