people meet there is communication by means of speech.

[Footnote 1: See _Great American Speeches_, edited by Clarence
Stratton, Lippincott and Company.]

Scientific invention keeps moving as rapidly as it can to take
advantage of this supreme importance. Great as was the advance marked
by the telegraph, it was soon overtaken and passed by the convenience
of the telephone. The first conveys messages at great distance, but it
fails to give the answer at once. It fails to provide for the rapid
_interchange_ of ideas which the second affords. Wireless telegraphy
has already been followed by wireless telephony. The rapid intelligent
disposal of the complicated affairs of our modern world requires more
than mere writing--it demands immediate interchange of ideas by means
of speech.

Many people who in their habitual occupations are popularly said to
write a great deal do nothing of the sort. The millions of typists in
the world do no writing at all in the real sense of that word; they
merely reproduce what some one else has actually composed and
dictated. This latter person also does no actual writing. He speaks
what he wants to have put into writing. Dictating is not an easily
acquired accomplishment in business--as many a man will testify.
Modern office practice has intensified the difficulty. It may be
rather disconcerting to deliver well-constructed, meaningful sentences
to an unresponsive stenographer, but at any rate the receiver is
alive. But to talk into the metallic receiver of a mechanical
dictaphone has an almost ridiculous air. Men have to train themselves
deliberately to speak well when they first begin to use these
time-saving devices. Outside of business, a great deal of the material