bill at home at five cents per telephone call would
be more than my income. Why, many a time I've called up as many as eight
people in the west part of town to know whether the red glow in the sky
was the sunset or the Rolling Mills at Paynesville burning down! And
almost every day I telephone McMuggins, the druggist, to collar a small
boy and send up an Eltarvia Cigar. If that call cost me five cents, I
would be practically smoking ten-cent cigars, and all Homeburg would
regard me with suspicion.

I suppose it will be a hundred years before we get over saying "Great
invention, isn't it?" every time we have finished a satisfactory session
over the telephone. But I don't think you city people realize how much
of an invention it is. Of course, the telephone is more important in
New York than it is in Homeburg. If you had to go back to the
old-fashioned stationary messenger boy to do your business here, a good
share of the city would have to close out at a sacrifice. You do things
with your telephones which dazzle us entirely, like talking into parlor
cars, calling up steamships, buying a railroad and saying airily "Charge
it," and tossing a few hectic words over to Pittsburgh or Cincinnati at
five dollars per remark, as casually as I would stop in and ask
Postmaster Flint why in thunder the Chicago papers were late again--and
that is about as casual as anything I know of.

I'm willing to admit that your telephones are much more wonderful than
ours, not only because of what they do for you, but because of the
amount of money they can get out of you without causing revolutions and
indignation meetings. Why, they tell me that business firms here think
nothing of paying one hundred dollars a year for a telephone! At home
once, when we tried to raise the farmer lines from fifty cents to a
dollar a month, we almost had to fortify the town. I take off my hat to
a telephone which can collect one hundred dollars a year from its user
without using thumbscrews. It must have more ways of working for you
than I have ever dreamed of.

No, the telephone in Homeburg is a very ordinary thing, and we could get
along without it quite nicely as far as exertion is concerned, it being
only a mile from end to end of the town. But if we had to do without our
telephone girls, we'd turn the whole town into a lodge of sorrow and
refuse to be comforted. I know of no grander invention than the country
town telephone girl. She's not only our servant