And indeed it was marvelous for there, stripped of all the backwardness and timidity that so often hamper the speech of old men, were recorded the golden thoughts of one grand old man as he dreamed of the glorious pioneer days that are gone forever.
“I’ll copy it,” Johnny told himself, “then I’ll have it printed in the Sentinel.
“No,” he amended, “I’ll do better than that. I’ll record his thoughts night after night. They’ll never be the same. It will make a book. And such a book!”
At that he sat for a long time dreaming of the marvelous things he would do with that thought-camera.
“But it belongs to Tao Sing,” he reminded himself. “Only he knows the secret of it. How long am I to have it? As long as I fulfill Tao Sing’s wishes I suppose.”
At that, with a shudder he could not entirely explain, he recalled his promise to Tao Sing. He was to carry the camera to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. He was to point it at his friend, the rich Chinese merchant Wung Lu, and record his thoughts for Tao Sing.
“I wonder why?” Disturbing thought!
“Think-o-graphs,” he whispered to himself before he fell asleep that night. “Good name for them, all right. A picture of your face is a photograph, so, naturally a picture of your thoughts is a think-o-graph. There now!” he chuckled to himself, “I’ve coined a brand new word. And if this thought-camera comes to be a common possession as ordinary cameras are, it will be a very popular word. If it does—” he repeated slowly.
He tried to think what the world would be like if anyone who wished it might have a thought-camera and photograph other people’s thoughts. There would not remain in the world one secret that could be kept, that was certain. All the secrets between nations would be at an end. Spies would lose their jobs. No criminal could escape revealing his innermost thoughts. The whole thing made him slightly dizzy, so he gave over thinking about it, and fell asleep.