The Inventions of the Idiot

Why not extend the principle and have a phonograph for men who can dance nothing but the two-step, charged with 'The Washington Post March,' and supplied with four tubes with receivers to put in the ears of the listeners? Make it small enough for a man to carry in his pocket; then at a ball he could go up to a young lady, ask her to dance, put two of the receivers in her ears, two in his, and trip the light fantastic toe utterly independently of what other people were dancing. It's possible. Mr. Edison could do it in five minutes, and every one would be satisfied. It might be rather droll to see two people dancing the two-step while eight others were fastened on to a lanciers phonograph, and a dozen or more other couples were dancing respectively the waltz, schottische, and Virginia reel, but we'd soon get used to that, and no man need become a wall-flower because he couldn't dance the dance that happened to be on. Furthermore, you'd be able to do away with the musicians, who always cast a pall over dances because of their superiority to the rest of the world in general and the dancers in particular." "How about your couple that prefer to sit out the dance on the stairs?" said the Poet, who, in common with the Idiot, knew several things about dances that Messrs. Pedagog and Whitechoker did not. "It would be particularly attractive to them," said the Idiot. "They could sit on the stairs and wax sentimental over any dreamy air the man happened to have in his vest-pocket. He could arrange all that beforehand--find out what song she thought divinest, and go loaded accordingly. And as for the things that usually happen on stairs at dances, as well as in conservatories at balls, with the aid of a phonograph a man could propose to a girl in the presence of a thousand people, and nobody but the maiden herself would be the wiser. I tell you, gentlemen," the Idiot added, enthusiastically, as he rose to depart, "if the phonograph people only knew their power they'd do great things. The patent vest-pocket phonograph for music at balls and proposals for bashful men alone would make their fortunes if they only could see it. I almost wish I were an electrician and not an Idiot."