tongue; so that a new method was provided for
those who wished to learn foreign languages or
to speak their own language more correctly.
And the third of these speech-improving Bells,
the inventor of the telephone, inherited the
peculiar genius of his fathers, both inventive and
rhetorical, to such a degree that as a boy he had
constructed an artificial skull, from gutta-percha
and India rubber, which, when enlivened by a
blast of air from a hand-bellows, would actually
pronounce several words in an almost human
manner.

The third Bell, the only one of this remarkable
family who concerns us at this time, was a young
man, barely twenty-eight, at the time when his
ear caught the first cry of the telephone. But he
was already a man of some note on his own account.
He had been educated in Edinburgh, the
city of his birth, and in London; and had in one
way and another picked up a smattering of
anatomy, music, electricity, and telegraphy.
Until he was sixteen years of age, he had read
nothing but novels and poetry and romantic tales
of Scottish heroes. Then he left home to become
a teacher of elocution in various British
schools, and by the time he was of age he had
made several slight discoveries as to the nature
of vowel-sounds. Shortly afterwards, he met in
London two distinguished men, Alexander J.