every highway, carrying
day messages by night and night messages when it gets ready, filling the
air with its rusty wings--provided, of course, that such agents wear
wings--and with the harsh, metallic, ghoulish laughter of the
signal-key, all the while resting one foot on the neck of the sender and
one on the neck of the recipient, defying aggregated humanity to do its
worst, and commanding all civilization, in terse, well-chosen terms, to
either fish, cut bait or go ashore.

Could Benjamin have known all this at the time, possibly he might have
considered it wisdom to go in when it rained.

I am not an old fogy, though I may have that appearance, and I rejoice
to see the world move on. One by one I have laid aside my own
encumbering prejudices in order to keep up with the procession. Have I
not gradually adopted everything that would in any way enhance my
opportunities for advancement, even through tedious evolution, from the
paper collar up to the finger bowl, eyether, and nyether?

This should convince the reader that I am not seeking to clog the
wheels of progress. I simply look with apprehension upon any great
centralization of wealth or power in the hands of any one man who not
only does as he pleases with said wealth and power, but who, as I am
informed, does not read my timely suggestions as to how he shall use
them.

To return, however, to the subject of electricity. I have recently
sought to fathom the style and _motif_ of a new system which is to be
introduced into private residences, hotels, and police headquarters. In
private houses it will be used as a burglar's welcome. In hotels it will
take the mental strain off the bell-boy, relieving him also of a portion
of his burdensome salary at the same time. In the police department it
will do almost everything but eat peanuts from the corner stands.

I saw this system on exhibition in a large room, with the signals or
boxes on one side and the annunciator or central station on the other.
By walking from one to the other, a distance in all of thirty or forty
miles, I was enabled to get a slight idea of the principle.

[Illustration: In hotels it will take the mental strain off the
bell-boy, relieving him also of a portion of his burdensome salary at
the same time (Page 256)]

It is certainly a very intelligent system. I never felt my own
inferiority any more than I did in the presence of this wonderful
invention. It is able to do nearly anything, it see