"It must all have been great fun, mustn't it?" said Laurie thoughtfully.
"Great fun, no doubt, but very hard work," was the tutor's answer. "Many a long, discouraging hour was yet to follow before the telephone became a factor in the everyday world. Yet each step of the climb to success had its sunlight as well as its shadow, its humor as well as its pathos; and it was fortunate both men appreciated this fact for it floated them over many a rough sea. Man can spare almost any other attribute better than his sense of humor. Without this touchstone he is ill equipped to battle with life," concluded Mr. Hazen whimsically.
CHAPTER XI
THE REST OF THE STORY
"I should think," commented Laurie one day, when Ted and Mr. Hazen were sitting in his room, "that Mr. Bell's landlady would have fussed no end to have his telephone ringing all the time."
"My dear boy, you do not for an instant suppose that the telephones of that period had bells, do you?" replied Mr. Hazen with amusement. "No, indeed! There was no method for signaling. Unless two persons agreed to talk at a specified hour of the day or night and timed their conversation by the clock, or else had recourse to the Morse code, there was no satisfactory way they could call one another. This did not greatly matter when you recollect how few telephones there were in existence. Mr. Williams used to summon a listener by tapping on the metal diaphragm of the instrument with his pencil, a practice none too beneficial to the transmitter; nor was the resulting sound powerful enough to reach any one who was not close at hand. Furthermore, persons could not stand and hold their telephones and wait until they could arouse the party at the other end of the line for a telephone weighed almost ten pounds and——"
"Ten pounds!" repeated Ted in consternation.
Mr. Hazen nodded.
"Yes," answered he, "the early telephones were heavy, cumbersome objects and not at all like the trim, compact instruments we have to-day. In fact, they were quite similar to the top of a sewing-machine box, only, perhaps, they were a trifle smaller. You can understand that one would not care to carry on a very long conversation if he must in the meantime stand and hold in his arms a ten-pound object about ten inches long, six inches wide, and six inches high."