om to us. We're no longer citizens
of Homeburg but of the congressional district. We're neighbors to towns
we hadn't heard of ten years ago, and the horizon nowadays for most of
us is located at the end of a ten-gallon tank of gasoline. Why, in the
old days, you had to go fifty miles east and double back to get into the
north part of our county, and more of us had crossed the ocean than had
been to Pallsbury in the north tier of townships. Now our commercial
clubs meet together alternate months, and about seventeen babies in our
town have proud grandparents up there.

That's part of what the automobile means to us, Jim. Can you blame me
for being so interested in a new one? Maybe it will have some
contrivance for scaring cows out of a narrow road.

X

THE HOMEBURG TELEPHONE EXCHANGE

_What Would Happen if We Tried to Get Along With a City Operator_

All right, Jim! Having now completed the task of telephoning to Murray
Hill several thousand and something, I'm ready to join you at luncheon.
I'm glad I telephoned. I won't have to spend the afternoon doing it now
and, besides, I feel so triumphant. I got through this time without
forgetting to get a nickel first. I usually go into one of those wooden
overcoats and go through all the agonies of elbowing my way through half
a dozen centrals into some one's ear several miles away, and then
discover that I haven't anything but a half dollar. Then I have to stop
and begin all over again.

Telephoning is one of the prices you have to pay to live in a
metropolis, Jim. I suppose it will always hurt me to pay a nickel for
telephoning. Seems like paying for a lungful of air--and bad air at
that. Coming as I do from the simple bosom of the nation, where talk
over the wires is so cheap that you sometimes have to wait half an hour
while two women are planning a church social over your line, I can't
seem to resign myself to paying the price of a street-car ride every
time I breathe a few sentiments into a telephone. Now the street cars
never fail to dazzle me. They are a wonderful bargain. When we are too
tired to walk in Homeburg, we have to pay at least fifty cents for a
horse from the livery stable, unless some automobile is going our way.
Nothing is more pleasant to me than to slip a nickel to a street-car
conductor and ride ten miles on it. But when we want to use a telephone,
do we go through all this ceremony of dropping a nickel into a set of
chimes? Not much. My