"No miracle at all," said Cyrus. "Not half so miraculous as the growth of that apple tree from a seed. And the human brain! Two handfuls of gray matter—and what it achieves! Did you ever happen to realize what a self-starting, Johnny-on-the-Spot, up-to-date miracle your memory is?"
Luther laughed. "Well, no. Not enough to forget my meals."
"Then do it some time. It's the champion mystery of the world. No man knows how it works. We know it furnishes us with names and places, facts and figures and events without limit, and they come to us instantaneously without waiting to be called. A thousand telegraph clerks with an acre of pigeon holes could not accomplish in an hour what your memory does in a second. It is quicker than greased lightning. It's the miracle of miracles. Why, Luther, these thought waves of mine, compared with it, are so simple and so easy that any normal baby could operate them."
"I guess you are right."
After a few more words, this conversation ended, and Luther departed. But Dr. Alton and Cyrus sat a long time on the little porch talking seriously of the Great Discovery.
But the inventor, later that afternoon, was not too much absorbed in electric wonders to visit a corner at the end of the garden. There he straightened up a slab that marked a grave. The slab was of wood. He brushed the surface with careful hands and read the letters he himself had carved nine years before.
HeRe Lies
Zac ALton He
Was VeRY SmARt
and ALSO
GooD
These lines Cyrus always read with a smile—not of mirth, but of satisfaction with their truth and justice to his old friend's character. Pleasant indeed were those memories!—lively and bounding memories: of adoration for himself and of unswerving loyalty to the final breath of a short but joyous life.