and master, but she's
our watch-dog, guardian, memorandum book, guide, philosopher and family
friend. When our telephone can't give us convenience enough, she
supplies the lack. When brains at both ends are scarce, she dumps hers
into the pot; and when the poor overworked instrument falls down on any
task, she takes up the job. She not only gives our telephone a voice,
but she gives it feet and hands and something to think with.

I got into a big telephone exchange once and watched it for over a
minute before I was fired out. It was a very impressive sight--rows on
rows of switchboards, hundreds of girls, thousands of little flashing
lights, millions of clickety-clicks and not enough conversation to run a
sewing circle up to refreshment time. The company was very proud of it,
and I suppose it was good enough for a city--but, pshaw, it wouldn't do
Homeburg for a day. If some one were to offer that entire exchange to us
free of charge, we'd struggle along with it for a few hours, and then
we'd rise up en masse and trade it off for Carrie Mason, our chief
operator, throwing in whatever we had to, to boot.

Our exchange is in the back room of the bank building up-stairs. You
could put the entire equipment in a dray. Our switchboard is about as
big as an old-fashioned china closet and has three hundred drops. I
suppose an up-to-date telephone manager has forgotten what "drops" are
and you can't be expected to know. But out our way the telephone
companies are cooeperative, and as every subscriber owns a share, we all
take a deep personal interest in the construction and operation of the
plant, discussing the need of a new switchboard and the advantage of
cabling the Main Street lead, in technical terms.

Well, anyway, a drop is a little brass door which falls down with a
clatter whenever the telephone which is hitched to that particular drop
wants a connection. And Miss Carrie Mason, our chief operator, sits on
a high stool with a receiver strapped over her rick of blond hair
jabbing brass plugs with long cords attached into the right holes with
unerring accuracy, and a reach which would give her a tremendous
advantage in any boarding-house in the land. Sometimes she has one
assistant, and in rush hours she has two. But on Sunday afternoons and
other quiet times she holds down the whole job alone for hours at a
time; and when I go up to her citadel and ask her to jam a toll call
through forty miles of barbed wire and misce