Unable to make the 1908 Pennsylvania German Society's annual gathering due to illness, their president—businessman, religious leader, and politician, John Wanamaker—sent in a message he recorded "through this wonderful invention of Mr. Edison on the Edison phonograph." This recording recalls an anecdote of Leo Tolstoy's, in which the Russian writer stopped at the roadside and asked a farmer who was ploughing, "Friend, what would you do today if you knew positively you would die tomorrow?"