He moves an indicator around like the
combination on a safe, reads a few pages of instructions, and then
pushes a button, perhaps. Instead of ringing for a boy and having to
wait some time for him, then asking him to obtain the correct time at
the office and come back with the information, conversing with various
people on his way and expecting compensation for it, the guest can ask
the office and receive the answer without getting out of bed. You leave
a call for a certain hour, and at that time your own private gong will
make it so disagreeable for you that you will be glad to rise. Again, if
you wish to know the amount of your bill, you go through certain
exercises with the large barometer in your room; and, supposing you have
been at the house two days and have had a fire in your room three times,
and your bill is therefore $132.18, the answer will come back and be
announced on your gong as follows: _One_, pause, _three_, pause, _two_,
pause, _one_, pause, _eight_. When there is a cipher in the amount I do
not know what the method is, but by using due care in making up the bill
this need not occur.

For police and fire purposes the system shows a wonderful degree of
intelligence, not only as a speedy means of conveying calls for the fire
department, health department, department of street cleaning, department
of interior and good of the order, but it furnishes also a method of
transmitting emergency calls, so that no citizen--no matter how poor or
unknown--need go without an emergency. The citizen has only to turn the
crank of the little iron marten-house till the gong ceases to ring, then
push on the "Citizens' button," and he can have fun with most any
emergency he likes. Should he decide, however, to shrink from the
emergency before it arrives, he can go away from there, or secrete
himself and watch the surprise of the ambulance driver or the fire
department when no mangled remains or forked fire fiend is found in that
region.

This system is also supposed to keep its eye peeled for policemen and
inform the central station where each patrolman is all the time; also as
to his temperature, pulse, perspiration and breath. It keeps a record of
this at the main office on a ticker of its own, and the information may
be published in the society columns of the papers in the morning. It
enables a citizen to use his own discretion about sounding an alarm. He
has only to be a citizen. He need not be a tax-payer or a vox p