Here, for instance, are three
plays quite as good as 'Hamlet,' written by two million men named Smith,
who gave up the use of tobacco. Here is a philosophical poem which shows
on every page an inspiration higher than Goethe ever attained; it
embodies the concentrated ideas produced by twenty-five thousand former
golf players, thinking half an hour a day for three days in the week.
Here is a poetic version of the future life which completely outclasses
the 'Divina Commedia.' It is compounded out of the experiences of
forty-three thousand moderate drinkers who became total abstainers,
seventy disbanded croquet associations, and 1,125 obsolete euchre clubs.
"Perhaps," concluded Cooper, "you should see this before you go," and he
pointed to a single shelf of books with a curious mechanical arrangement
at one side. "This shelf," he said, "is exactly five feet long. This
little electric motor at the side is so constructed that it gets into
motion every day for twenty minutes, and stops. By a system of cogs and
levers the motor propels a fine steel needle straight through the five
feet of books.
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