attracted my attention was the discovery of the fact that sound was not, as thousands of scientific men have asserted, a mere vibration of aerial particles, but, on the contrary, was, and is, a fine, very fine and attenuated substance, which leaves any and all objects that are jarred or struck—and leaves in greater or less volume, in pointed pencil-rays, single rays, broad sheets of various shapes, and in undulatory waves, according to the nature of the object whence it flows, the force of the blow struck, and the character of the object used in striking. It would be quite worth the while for our savants to make experiments to verify, or, if possible, refute these statements.
The man resumed his seat; and I saw that from his internal brain there proceeded to the outer ears innumerable fibres of pale green light, and that the pencil-rays and sheets of sound, which were at that moment floating through all contiguous space, came in direct contact with the terminals of what,—for want of a better name,—I will call fibres, or, more properly, fibrils; the contact took place within the rim of the external ear, and the sound was instantaneously transmitted, or telegraphed, along the auditory nerve to the sanctum sanctorum, of his very soul.
The question naturally arises in the reader's mind at this point: "How was it possible for you to become cognizant of sound under the very peculiar circumstances and conditions by which you were surrounded for the time being? You could not hear by means of the outer ear and auditory nerves, for it is plain, if your story be indeed a recital of actual events, and not merely a splendid philosophical fiction, that your material hearing apparatus had been left behind you, in the body,
