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140 THE PHONOGRAM Band cylinder playing the ‘ President’s March,’ and then sent an invitation to General and Mrs. Cronje and one of the Boer officers who was also accompanied by his wife. They came in, and, while making a pretext of exhibiting some photographs, started the maching to going. At the first notes the whole party looked intensely amazed, but, of course, they soon located the source of the sound. ‘ I heard you had a talking box that talked like a man,' said Cronje, through the interpreter. ‘Is that it?’ ‘Yes, General,* I replied, and when the cylinder stopped I slipped on another containing Moody and Sankey’s hymn, “The Ninety and Nine,’ which I had been told they sang in their own language. The effect was startling. They recognized the tune at once and Mrs. Cronje burst suddenly into tears, while the* other woman lifted a quavering voice and began to sing the words in Boer Dutch. Her husband turned away and wiped his- eyes, and I could see by the spasmodic clasping and unclasping of his hands that General Cronje was effected. To relieve the tension I put on a record with a lively banjo solo, and in a moment the old gentleman began to smile and beat time with his feet and head, his grey beard wagging to the melody. It was funny to see him. When the music had ceased a black Kaffir boy, a body servant, who had followed the party in, said awesomely that there was a devil in the box. Cronje frowned down the suggestion, but asked whether it wasn’t done by some trick, like ventriloquism, making an express- ive gesture to his lips. To satisfy him I took the machine apart and explained the mechanism in detail. He grasped the principle very quickly and seemed deeply interested. I left the instrument at St. Helena.—From the New Orleans Times-Democrat.