Conceivably even one might hear the speech of their inhabitants, if they have any; always presuming that such an instrument could be made, and that it can be successfully insulated." "Hear the speech of their inhabitants! That is your old idea, but you will never succeed, that's one blessing.

Morris, I suspect you; you want to stop at home here to work at this horrible new machine; to work for years, and years, and years without the slightest result.

I suppose that you didn't invent that about the measles and the scarlatina, did you?
The two of them together sound rather clumsy, as though you might have done so." "Not a bit, upon my honour," answered Morris.

"I will go and get the letter," and, not sorry to escape from further examination, he went.
Whether the cause were Mary's doubts and reproaches, or the infant's gums, or the working of his own conscience,--he felt that a man with a teething baby has no right to cultivate the occult.

For quite a long period, a whole fortnight, indeed, Morris steadily refrained from any attempt to fulfil his dangerous ambition to "pierce the curtain of thick night." Only he read and re-read Stella's diary--that secret, fascinating work which in effect was building a wall between him and the healthy, common instincts of the world--till he knew whole pages of it by heart.