And so, just in order to give that little touch of the "heart interest," I am going to tell you of a couple of little incidents that came into our lives at different times.
One night several years ago we were playing in a little town way up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. The night telegraph operator at the railroad station was an old schoolmate of mine. And so after the show was over I went over to the station to have a visit with him. It was a still cold night in the middle of winter and we sat around the little stove in his office, talking over our boyhood days back in New Hampshire.
Along about midnight the outer door opened and a poor, ragged, hungry-looking young chap of twenty-two or three stepped in and walked to the stove. After he had got his hands thawed out a little he came over to the window of the telegraph office and handed the operator a piece of paper. It was just a piece of common wrapping paper with a message written on it in lead pencil.
"How much will it cost me to send that message?" he asked.
The operator counted the words.
"Ten words; twenty-five cents."
The young fellow withdrew his closed hand from his pocket and emptied out exactly twenty-five cents in pennies and nickels, sighed and went out.
The operator sat down and sent the message. Then he sat looking at the paper for quite a few seconds; then he turned to me and said,
"Well, I have been jerking lightning quite a while now, but there is the biggest ten words I ever sent."
He handed me the message; it read—