For fully two hours they sat entranced through a varied program that included things so dissimilar as famous grand opera selections, the plaintive melodies of Hawaiian guitars, and some jazz, and when at last the list was ended the boys sat back with a sigh of satisfaction, their faces flushed and their eyes shining.
“Ever hear anything like it?” asked Bob, as he relaxed into his chair and took off his ear pieces.
“It’s the best ever!” declared Joe. “And to think that we can have something like it almost any night we choose, and all of that without going out of this room!”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Bob assented. “To hear a concert that included such fine talent as that we’d have to go to New York. That would mean all the time and trouble of dressing up, the long ride on the railroad train, the getting back home at two or three o’clock in the morning, to say nothing of the ten dollars apiece or thereabouts that we’d have to pay for train fare and tickets for the concert. For us four that would mean about forty dollars. Now we haven’t paid forty cents, not even one cent, we haven’t had to dress, we’ve sat around here lazy and comfy, we can go to bed whenever we like, and we’ve had the concert just the same. And what we did to-night we can do any night. I tell you, fellows, we haven’t begun yet to realize what a wonderful thing this radio is. It’s simply a miracle.”
“Right you are,” agreed Joe. “And just remember that what’s true of us four is true of four thousand or perhaps four hundred thousand. Take the biggest concert hall in the United States and perhaps it will hold five thousand. When it’s full, everybody else has to stay away. But there’s no staying away with radio. And every one has as good a seat as any one else. Think where that concert’s been heard to-night. People out as far as Chicago and Detroit have heard it. They’ve listened to it on board of ships out at sea. In lonely farmhouses people have enjoyed it. Men sitting around campfires up in the Adirondacks have had receivers at their ears. Sick people and cripples lying on their beds have been cheered by it. Lonely people in hotel rooms far away from home have found pleasure in it. There’s absolutely no limit to what the radio can do. It seems to me that it throws in the shade everything else that’s ever been invented.”
“You haven’t put it a bit too strong,” chimed in Herb. “But talking about a lot of people hearing it makes me think that perhaps we fellows have been a bit selfish.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jimmy in some surprise. “It isn’t so long ago that we got the old folks and sick folks together and gave them a concert at Doctor Dale’s house—Joel Banks and Aunty Bixby and the rest of them.”
“I don’t mean that,” explained Herb. “That was all right as far as it went, and I hope we’ll do it soon again. But what I have in mind are our own folks and our friends. Our fathers and mothers haven’t heard much of this concert to-night, and there are some of the fellows that we might have invited in.”
“But we have only four sets of ear pieces,” objected Jimmy. “I suppose of course we could attach a few more——”
“I get Herb’s idea,” interrupted Bob, “and it’s a good one. He thinks that we ought to have a loud-speaker—a horn that would fill the room with sound and do away with the ear pieces altogether.”