Get this cursed bad business
off your mind.'
The next day Hawver was found dead in his room,
the violin at his neck, the bow upon the string, his
music open before him at Chopin's Funeral March.
MOXON'S MASTER
'ARE you serious?--do you really believe that a
machine thinks?'
I got no immediate reply; Moxon was apparently
intent upon the coals in the grate, touching them
deftly here and there with the fire-poker till they
signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow.
For several weeks I had been observing in him a
growing habit of delay in answering even the most
trivial of commonplace questions. His air, however,
was that of preoccupation rather than deliberation:
one might have said that he had 'something on his
mind.'
Presently he said:
'What is a "machine"? The word has been va-
riously defined. Here is one definition from a popu-
lar dictionary: "Any instrument or organization by
which power is applied and made effective, or a
desired effect produced." Well, then, is not a man a
machine? And you will admit that he thinks--or
thinks he thinks.'
'If you do not wish to answer my question,'
said, rather testily, 'why not say so?--all
that you say is mere evasion. You know well
enough that when I say "machine" I do not mean
a man, but something that man has made and con-
trols.'
'When it does not control him,' he said, rising
abruptly and looking out of a window, whence noth-
ing was visible in the blackness of a stormy night.
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