By degrees I made a discovery of still greater moment. I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers. This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it.
—Mary Shelley, British novelist, biographer, and editor, Frankenstein, 1818

Posted on May 17, 2000 at 6:11 PM

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