I recall two pleasant social events of that winter: one a little party
given at the Clemenses' home on New-Year's Eve, with charades and
story-telling and music. It was the music feature of this party that was
distinctive; it was supplied by wire through an invention known as
the telharmonium which, it was believed, would revolutionize musical
entertainment in such places as hotels, and to some extent in private
houses. The music came over the regular telephone wire, and was
delivered through a series of horns or megaphones--similar to those
used for phonographs--the playing being done, meanwhile, by skilled
performers at the central station. Just why the telharmonium has not
made good its promises of popularity I do not know. Clemens was
filled with enthusiasm over the idea. He made a speech a little before
midnight, in which he told how he had generally been enthusiastic
about inventions which had turned out more or less well in about equal
proportions. He did not dwell on the failures, but he told how he had
been the first to use a typewriter for manuscript work; how he had been
one of the earliest users of the fountain-pen; how he had installed the
first telephone ever used in a private house, and how the audience now
would have a demonstration of the first telharmonium music so employed.
It was just about the stroke of midnight when he finished, and a moment
later the horns began to play chimes and “Auld Lang Syne” and “America.”
The other pleasant evening referred to was a little company given in
honor of Helen Keller. It was fascinating to watch her, and to realize
with what a store of knowledge she had lighted the black silence of her
physical life. To see Mark Twain and Helen Keller together was something
not easily to be forgotten. When Mrs. Macy (who, as Miss Sullivan, had
led her so marvelously out of the shadows) communicated his words to
her with what seemed a lightning touch of the fingers her face radiated
every shade of his meaning-humorous, serious, pathetic. Helen visited
the various objects in the room, and seemed to enjoy them more than the
usual observer of these things, and certainly in greater detail.
Her sensitive fingers spread over articles of bric-a-brac, and the
exclamations she uttered were always fitting, showing that she somehow
visualized each thing in all its particulars. There was a bronze cat of
handsome workmanship and happy expression, and when she had run those
all--seeing fingers of hers over it she said: “It is smiling.”