h, and more than
once the indignant young operator located the subscriber (not a very
difficult thing for him to do) and went around to settle things in
person. Words were not always the only weapons used.

If this had continued the telephone would never have become a public
utility. People would have looked upon it as an ingenious device but not
of universal practical value. As it is, good salesmanship and efficient
service first elevated a plaything to a luxury and then reduced the
luxury to a necessity. And it was possible not only because the
mechanism itself is a miraculous thing but because it has had back of it
an intelligent human organization working together as a unit.

We say this deliberately, knowing that the reader will think of the
times when the trouble he has had in getting the number he wanted has
made him think there was not a thimbleful of intelligence among all of
the people associated with the entire telephone company. But considering
the body of employees as a whole the standard of courteous and competent
service is extraordinarily high. The public is impatient and prone to
remember bad connections instead of good ones. It is ignorant also and
has very small conception of what a girl at central is doing. And it is
quick to blame her for faults of its own.

One of the worst features of telephone service is the fact that when one
is angry or exasperated he seldom quarrels with the right person. Some
time ago a man was waked in the middle of the night by the ringing of
the telephone bell. He got out of bed to answer it and discovered that
the man was trying to get another number. He went back to bed and to
sleep. The telephone bell rang again, and again he got out of bed to
answer it. It was the same man trying to get the same number. He went to
bed and back to sleep. The telephone bell rang the third time, he got
out of bed again and answered it again and found that it was still the
same man trying to get the same number! "I wasn't very polite the third
time," he confessed when he told about it. But the poor fellow at the
other end of the wire probably had just as touching a story to tell, for
unless it had been very important for him to get the number he would
hardly have been so persistent. The girl at the switchboard may have had
a story of her own, but what it was is one of those things which, as
Lord Dundreary used to say, nobody can find out.

The girls who enter the service of the New York