But surely before long some Edison would make the true
automaton; the problem must be comparatively such a simple one.
Only to throw in a given number of old books, and have them
reduced, blended, modernised into a single one for to-day's
consumption.
The fog grew thicker; she looked up at the windows beneath the
dome and saw that they were a dusky yellow. Then her eye
discerned an official walking along the upper gallery, and in
pursuance of her grotesque humour, her mocking misery, she
likened him to a black, lost soul, doomed to wander in an
eternity of vain research along endless shelves. Or again, the
readers who sat here at these radiating lines of desks, what were
they but hapless flies caught in a huge web, its nucleus the
great circle of the Catalogue? Darker, darker. From the towering
wall of volumes seemed to emanate visible motes, intensifying the
obscurity; in a moment the book-lined circumference of the room
would be but a featureless prison-limit.
But then flashed forth the sputtering whiteness of the electric
light, and its ceaseless hum was henceforth a new source of
headache.
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