There's very little that Carrie doesn't know. I shudder to think what would happen if Carrie should get miffed and begin to divulge. Once we had a telephone girl who did this. She was a pert young thing who had come to town with her family a short time before. It was a mistake to hire her—telephone girls should be watched and tested for discretion from babyhood up—but our directors did it, and because she showed a passion for literature and gum and very little for work, they fired her in three months. She left with reluctance, but she talked with enthusiasm; and Homeburg was an armed camp for a long time.
Goodness knows we have enough trouble with our telephone even with Carrie to supply discretion for the whole town. Party lines and rubber ears are the source of all our woe. You know what a party line is, of course. It's a line on which you can have a party and gab merrily back and forth for forty minutes, while some other subscriber is wildly dancing with impatience. Most of our lines have four subscribers apiece, and it's just as hard to live in friendliness on a party line as it is for four families to get along good-naturedly in the same house.
There's Mrs. Sim Askinson, for instance. She's a good woman and her pies have produced more deep religious satisfaction at the Methodist church socials than many a sermon. But St. Peter himself couldn't live on the same telephone line with her. She's polite and refined in any other way, but when she gets on a telephone line she's a hostile monopolist. Early in the morning she grabs it and holds it fiercely against all comers, while talking with her friends about the awful time she had the night before when the cold water faucet in the kitchen began to drip. Mrs. Askinson can talk an hour on this fertile subject, stopping each minute or two to say, with the most corrosive dignity, to some poor victim who is wiggling his receiver hook: "Please get off this line, whoever you are. Haven't you any manners? I'm talking, and I'll talk till I get through." And then, like as not, when she's through, she'll leave the receiver down so that no one else will be able to talk—thus holding the line in instant readiness when another fit of conversation comes on. Seven party lines have revolted in succession and have demanded that Mrs. Askinson be taken off and wished on to some one else, and Sim is mighty worried. His wife has lost him so many friends that he doubts if he will be able to run for the town board next year.
We're a nice, peaceable folk in Homeburg, face to face. But like every one else, we lay aside our manners when we get on the wires and push and elbow each other a good deal. Funny what a difference it makes when you are talking into a formless void to some strange human voice. I've never said: "Get out of here," to any one in my office yet, but when some one intrudes on my electric conversation, even by mistake, I boil with rage and I yell with the utmost fervor and indignation: "Get off this line! Don't you know any better than to ring in?" And the other person comes right back with: "Well, you big hog, I've waited ten minutes, and I'll ring all I want!" And then I say something more, and something is said to me that eats a little semicircular spot out of the edge of my ear. It's mighty lucky neither of us knows who is talking. Suppose Carrie should tell. As I say, Carrie holds us in the hollow of her hand.
But the rubber ear is even worse than the Berkshire manners. A rubber ear is one that is always stretching itself over some telephone line to hear a conversation which doesn't concern it. For a long time we were singularly obtuse about this little point of etiquette in the country. The fact that all the bells on a line rang with every call was a constant temptation to sit in when we weren't wanted. We listened to other people's conversations when we felt like it. It amused us, and why shouldn't we? We rented our telephone and we had a right to pick it up and soak in everything that was going through it.
When the exchange was first put in, fifteen years ago, more than one Homeburg woman used to wash her dishes with the telephone receiver strapped tightly to her ear, dropping into the conversation whenever she felt that she could contribute something of interest. As for the country lines, it was the regular thing, and nobody minded it at all. That was what killed the first line out of Homeburg. It had fourteen subscribers and every one was hitched on the same wire. For a month everything went nicely. Then old man Miller got mad at two neighbors who were sort of sizing him up over the wire, and quit speaking to them. And Mrs. Ames was caught gossiping, and a quarrel ensued in which about half the line took part, all being on the wire and handy. Young Frank Anderson heard Barney DeWolf making an engagement with his girl and licked Barney. One thing led to another until not a subscriber would speak to another one, and the line just naturally pined away.
Etiquette has tightened up a lot since then. Still, we have rubber ears to-day, and they cause half the trouble in Homeburg. You see, the telephone has entirely driven out the back fence as a medium of gossip. It offers so much wider opportunities. Nowadays it does all the business which begins with: "Don't breathe this to a soul, but I just heard—" and half the time some uninvited listener with an ear like a graphophone horn is drinking in the details, to be published abroad later. Mrs. Cal Saunders had our worst case of gummy ear up to a couple of years ago, and broke up two engagements by listening too much. But she doesn't do it any more. Clayt Emerson cured her.
Something had to be done for the good of the town and Clayt, who lived on the same line with her, conceived the plan of letting Mrs. Saunders hear something worth while just to keep her busy and happy. So he called up Wimble Horn and talked casually until he heard the little click which meant that Mrs. Saunders had focused her large receptive ear on the conversation. Then he told Horn that he was going to burn the darn stuff up, trade being bad, anyway. Wimble offered to help him, and for three nights they talked mysteriously about the crime, mentioning more plotters, while Mrs. Cal hung on the line with her eyes bulging out, and confided the secret to all the friends she had.
Finally on Friday night, Policeman Costello, who was in the deal, told Clayt that the expected had happened and that Mrs. Saunders had told him about the horrible incendiary plot which was being hatched. Saturday night came, and Costello refused to go to Clayt's store unless Mrs. Saunders would come and denounce the villains, who were among our most respected citizens. So Mrs. Saunders finally agreed, in fear and trembling, and, taking a couple of her firmest friends, she led Policeman Costello down to Clayt's restaurant at midnight, and, sure enough, there was a light in the back part. Costello burst open the door, and when they all rushed down on the scene of the crime, they found Clayt and half a dozen of us manfully smoking up a box of stogies which a slick traveling man had unloaded on him. Mrs. Saunders insisted that crime was about to be committed and got so excited that she repeated Clayt's exact words—in the middle of which a great light came to her, and she said she was going home.
"I think you had better," said Clayt, "and I'll tell you something more. You listen to other people's affairs more than is good for you."