Voices

"We have been together 50 years," said a voice. "Fifty years of invention and achievement. We have shared defeat and success, discouragement and triumph. You have in that time made me a universal messenger of happiness and education to rich and poor. This is my 50th birthday and I have a favor to ask. I want to hear again from your own lips those immortal phrases which you spoke to me half a century ago." So another voice replied: Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go. The second voice was that of Thomas Alva Edison. The first was really that of one Thomas Chalmers onetime of the Metropolitan Opera Company, but Mr. Edison and his friends pretended that it actually belonged to the phonograph.