But that is only one book; God has other books also. But you know you can not photograph what a person says. So I want to try and show you how our words and all we say also go into a great book and write themselves down, so as to become permanent for all time.
Now, I have here a baking-powder box, from which I have removed the ends, and in place of the tin have covered it with a stout piece of paper which I have tried to draw very smoothly. With two such boxes, connected by a string, we could make a telephone so that we could talk together a short distance. Or with only one box we could construct a very rude but yet very suggestive phonograph.
Let me tell you how it is that you can hear over the telephone, whether made of a simple box and string like this, or with a wire and electric battery, for in one respect they are both alike.
If you will place your finger gently on your throat, against what is sometimes called "Adam's Apple," but what is really the delicate little instrument with which we speak, and then utter some words in a strong, clear voice, you will doubtless feel a vibration or trembling in your throat, just the same as I now feel in my throat while I am talking. My effort to speak causes these little chords in my throat to vibrate, just the same as when you pass your fingers over the chords of a harp or violin, or when you strike the keys of a piano you make the wires tremble and thus produce sound, so these chords in my throat tremble and cause the air to tremble, producing what we call sound-waves. Just the same as when you take a stone and drop it into the lake, you see the little waves or ripples, as we call them, go out in small circles, wider and wider, further and further, until they strike the distant shore. So the air is made to vibrate by my effort to speak, and these little sound-waves in the air strike against the drum of your ear, back of which there are nerves, ever ready to convey to the brain the sensation which we call sound,
"The Little Waves or Ripples."
"Like clear circles widening round
Upon a clear blue river,
Orb after orb, the wondrous sound
Is echoed on forever."
Now, this small baking-powder box represents the ear, and the paper at this end represents the drum of the ear, and this string represents the nerves. This string may be prolonged for a considerable distance, and if you were to connect the end of the string with another box of the same sort you would then have a telephone with which you would be able to hear quite plainly the words which are spoken by some other person at the opposite end of the string. When I speak into this box it makes the paper tremble, and that makes the string tremble, and if there were another box at the far end of the line it would cause the paper on the end of that box to tremble just the same, and that would cause the air to tremble where that box is, and if you were to hold your ear to that box you would be able to hear the words.
Phonograph Cylinder.