feels that people we used to enjoy
meeting, if they do not happen to move in the same orbit of
metropolitan existence, are vanishing from our ken. They are being
lost in the Limbo of long distances. An hour of Underground in very
hot weather may give the remoteness of Styx-ferryage.

It would be nice even to be able to speak to one's friends who are not
conveniently visitable. In other cities this is possible, but not
here. The telephone service of an American town or a Norwegian village
is a thing of which London has never got even sufficient sample-taste
to realise what she is deprived of, or what she ought very reasonably
to demand. There is no reason why London should remain telephonically
deaf and dumb. There is nothing which strikes the visitor more
forcibly, however, than the long-suffering patience of the Londoner.
The exasperatingly slow, inefficient apology for a telephone service
that would not be tolerated anywhere else is good enough for London.
It is no excuse to plead in apology the great size of the City, when
there is the example of New York before one, where there are more
telephones, where they are cheaper, and where the average time to get
into communication with another subscriber appears to be a third or a
fourth of the time taken in London. It is only when one has had actual
experience of a thoroughly telephoned town that one appreciates the
convenience of it. Look what it means for saving time in shopping,
doing business, making appointments, and speaking to one's friends. "I
got a telephone put right into my room the day I arrived," said an
American friend, "but the people I want to speak to most often don't
seem to use them, and it is so darned slow getting on to those that do
that now I am keeping a cab by the day; it is quicker in the end, and
makes me swear less."

It will only be a matter of time, and that not so very far off, when
wireless telegraphy will replace the telephone. The principle of
sending messages in a multiplicity of keys, so that a message sent
will only be received on the instrument keyed for it, has been
established, and only requires practical working out. Until that time
London will probably have to remain as deaf and dumb as it is.

As regards getting from one part to another, it is not a cheerful
thing to contemplate that what should be the most agreeable way of
traversing London--I mean the pathway of the river--should just now be
closed, and while Mr. Yerkes loo