: L. Frank Baum
: The Master Key An Electrical Fairy Tale Founded Upon The Mysteries Of Electricity
: Dead Dodo Adventure
: 9781508085423
: 1
: CHF 0.70
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 140
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
The Master Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale, Founded Upon the Mysteries of Electricity and the Optimism of Its Devotees is a 1901 novel by L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

 

The protagonist is a boy named Rob Joslyn. His age is not specified. Baum dedicated the book 'To My Son, Robert Stanton Baum,' who was born in 1886 and would thus have been about fifteen at the time it was published.

 

Rob is an electrical experimenter whose father encourages him and sees that he 'never lacked batteries, motors or supplies of any sort.' A 'net-work[sic] of wires soon ran throughout the house'. He loses track of the elaborately interconnected wires, and trying to get a cardboard house to light up, he 'experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike the right combination.' There is a bright flash, and a being who calls himself the Demon of Electricity appears. He tells Rob that he has accidentally 'touched the Master Key of Electricity' and is entitled to 'to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks.' Rob protests that he does not know what to ask for, and the Demon agrees to select the gifts himself.

3. THE THREE GIFTS


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FAMILIARITY WITH ANY GREAT THING removes our awe of it. The great general is only terrible to the enemy; the great poet is frequently scolded by his wife; the children of the great statesman clamber about his knees with perfect trust and impunity; the great actor who is called before the curtain by admiring audiences is often waylaid at the stage door by his creditors.

So Rob, having conversed for a time with the glorious Demon of Electricity, began to regard him with more composure and less awe, as his eyes grew more and more accustomed to the splendor that at first had well-nigh blinded them.

When the Demon announced himself ready to do the boy’s bidding, he frankly replied:

“I am no skilled electrician, as you very well know. My calling you here was an accident. So I don’t know how to command you, nor what to ask you to do.”

“But I must not take advantage of your ignorance,” answered the Demon. “Also, I am quite anxious to utilize this opportunity to show the world what a powerful element electricity really is. So permit me to inform you that, having struck the Master Key, you are at liberty to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks. These gifts, provided they are within the scope of electricity, I will grant.”

Rob shook his head regretfully.

“If I were a great electrician I should know what to ask,” he said. “But I am too ignorant to take advantage of your kind offer.”

“Then,” replied the Demon, “I will myself suggest the gifts, and they will be of such a character that the Earth people will learn the possibilities that lie before them and be encouraged to work more intelligently and to persevere in mastering those natural and simple laws which control electricity. For one of the greatest errors they now labor under is tha