The Enchanted Typewriter. Bangs John Kendrick
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the keys, confronted by an empty chair, three hours after midnight, rattling off page after page of something which might or might not be readable, I could not at the moment determine. For two or three minutes I gazed in open-mouthed wonder. I was not frightened, but I did experience a sensation which comes from contact with the uncanny. As I gradually grasped the situation and became used, somewhat, to what was going on, I ventured a remark.
“This beats the deuce!” I observed.
The machine stopped for an instant. The sheet of paper upon which the impressions of letters were being made flew out from under the cylinder, a pure white sheet was as quickly substituted, and the keys clicked off the line:
“What does?”
I presumed the line was in response to my assertion, so I replied:
“You do. What uncanny freak has taken possession of you to-night that you start in to write on your own hook, having resolutely declined to do any writing for me ever since I rescued you from the dust and dirt and cobwebs of the attic?”
“You never rescued me from any attic,” the machine replied. “You’d better go to bed; you’ve dined too well, I imagine. When did you rescue me from the dust and dirt and the cobwebs of any attic?”
“What an ungrateful machine you are!” I cried. “If you have sense enough to go into writing on your own account, you ought to have mind enough to remember the years you spent up-stairs under the roof neglected, and covered with hammocks, awnings, family portraits, and receipted bills.”
“Really, my dear fellow,” the machine tapped back, “I must repeat it. Bed is the place for you. You’re not coherent. I’m not a machine, and upon my honor, I’ve never seen your darned old attic.”
“Not a machine!” I cried. “Then what in Heaven’s name are you?—a sofa-cushion?”
“Don’t be sarcastic, my dear fellow,” replied the machine. “Of course I’m not a machine; I’m Jim—Jim Boswell.”
“What?” I roared. “You? A thing with keys and type and a bell—”
“I haven’t got any keys or any type or a bell. What on earth are you talking about?” replied the machine. “What have you been eating?”
“What’s that?” I asked, putting my hand on the keys.
“That’s keys,” was the answer.
“And these, and that?” I added, indicating the type and the bell.
“Type and bell,” replied the machine.
“And yet you say you haven’t got them,” I persisted.
“No, I haven’t. The machine has got them, not I,” was the response. “I’m not the machine. I’m the man that’s using it—Jim—Jim Boswell. What good would a bell do me? I’m not a cow or a bicycle. I’m the editor of the Stygian Gazette, and I’ve come here to copy off my notes of what I see and hear, and besides all this I do type-writing for various people in Hades, and as this machine of yours seemed to be of no use to you I thought I’d try it. But if you object, I’ll go.”
As I read these lines upon the paper I stood amazed and delighted.
“Go!” I cried, as the full value of his patronage of my machine dawned upon me, for I could sell his copy and he would be none the worse off, for, as I understand the copyright laws, they are not designed to benefit authors, but for the protection of type-setters. “Why, my dear fellow, it would break my heart if, having found my machine to your taste, you should ever think of using another. I’ll lend you my bicycle, too, if you’d like it—in fact, anything I have is at your command.”
“Thank you very much,” returned Boswell through the medium of the keys, as usual. “I shall not need your bicycle, but this machine is of great value to me. It has several very remarkable qualities which I have never found in any other machine. For instance, singular to relate, Mendelssohn and I were fooling about here the other night, and when he saw this machine he thought it was a spinet of some new pattern; so what does he do but sit down and play me one of his songs without words on it, and, by jove! when he got through, there was the theme of the whole thing printed on a sheet of paper before him.”
“You don’t really mean to say—” I began.
“I’m telling you precisely what happened,” said Boswell. “Mendelssohn was tickled to death with it, and he played every song without words that he ever wrote, and every one of ‘em was fitted with words which he said absolutely conveyed the ideas he meant to bring out with the music. Then I tried the machine, and discovered another curious thing about it. It’s intensely American. I had a story of Alexander Dumas’ about his Musketeers that he wanted translated from French into American, which is the language we speak below, in preference to German, French, Volapuk, or English. I thought I’d copy off a few lines of the French original, and as true as I’m sitting here before your eyes, where you can’t see me, the copy I got was a good, though rather free, translation. Think of it! That’s an advanced machine for you!”
I looked at the machine wistfully. “I wish I could make it work,” I said; and I tried as before to tap off my name, and got instead only a confused jumble of letters. It wouldn’t even pay me the compliment of transforming my name into that of Shakespeare, as it had previously done.
It was thus that the magic qualities of the machine were made known to me, and out of it the following papers have grown. I have set them down without much editing or alteration, and now submit them to your inspection, hoping that in perusing them you will derive as much satisfaction and delight as I have in being the possessor of so wonderful a machine, manipulated by so interesting a person as “Jim—Jim Boswell”—as he always calls himself—and others, who, as you will note, if perchance you have the patience to read further, have upon occasions honored my machine by using it.
I must add in behalf of my own reputation for honesty that Mr. Boswell has given me all right, title, and interest in these papers in this world as a return for my permission to him to use my machine.
“What if they make a hit and bring in barrels of gold in royalties,” he said. “I can’t take it back with me where I live, so keep it yourself.”
II. MR. BOSWELL IMPARTS SOME LATE NEWS OF HADES
Boswell was a little late in arriving the next night. He had agreed to be on hand exactly at midnight, but it was after one o’clock before the machine began to click and the bell to ring. I had fallen asleep in the soft upholstered depths of my armchair, feeling pretty thoroughly worn out by the experiences of the night before, which, in spite of their pleasant issue, were nevertheless somewhat disturbing to a nervous organization like mine. Suddenly I waked, and with the awakening there entered into my mind the notion that the whole thing was merely a dream, and that in the end it would be the better for me if I were to give up Aldus and other club dinners with nightmare inducing menus. But I was soon convinced that the real state of affairs was quite otherwise, and that everything really had happened as I have already related it to you, for I had hardly gotten my eyes free from what my poetic son calls “the seeds of sleep” when I heard the type-writer tap forth:
“Hello, old man!”
Incidentally let me say that this had become another interesting feature of the machine. Since my first interview with Boswell the taps seemed to speak, and if some one were sitting before it and writing a line the mere differentiation of sounds of the various keys would convey to the mind the ideas conveyed to it by the printed words. So, as I say, my ears were greeted with a clicking “Hello, old man!” followed immediately by the bell.
“You are late,” said I, looking at my watch.
“I know it,” was the response. “But I can’t help it. During the campaign I am kept so infernally busy I hardly know where I am.”
“Campaign, eh?” I put in. “Do you have campaigns in Hades?”
“Yes,” replied Boswell, “and we are having a—well, to be polite, a regular Gehenna of a time. Things have changed much in Hades latterly. There has