f it were a necessary evil we
could make ourselves grow accustomed to it. But it is not. And there is
already enough unavoidable wear and tear during the course of a business
day without adding this.

"_Hello, what do you want?_" is no way to answer a call. No decent
person would speak even to a beggar at his door in this way and the
visitor over the telephone, whoever he is, is entitled to a cordial
greeting. _The voice with the smile wins._

An amusing story is told of a man in Washington who was waked one
evening about eleven o'clock by the telephone bell. At first he swore
that he would not answer it but his wife insisted that it might be
something very important, and finally, outraged and angry, he blundered
through the dark across the room and into the hall, jerked down the
receiver and yelled, "Hello!" His wife, who was listening tensely for
whatever ill news might be forthcoming, was perfectly amazed to hear him
saying in the next breath, in the most dulcet tones he had ever used,
"Oh, how do you do, I'm _so_ glad you called. Oh, delightful. Charmed.
I'm sure she will be, too. Thank you. Yes, indeed. So good of you.
_Good_-bye." It was the wife of the President of the United States
asking him and his wife to dinner at the White House.

If the person calling is given the wrong department he should be
courteously transferred to the right one. Courteously, and not with a
brusque, "You've got the wrong party" or "I'm not the man you want" but
with "Just a minute, please, and I'll give you Mr. Miller."

The time when people are rudest over the telephone is when some one
breaks in on the wire. It might be just as well to remember that people
do not interrupt intentionally, and the intruder is probably as
disconcerted as the man he has interrupted. If he had inadvertently
opened the wrong door in a business office the man inside would not have
yelled, "Get out of here," but over the telephone he will shriek, "Get
off the wire" in a tone he would hardly use to drive the cow out of a
cabbage patch.

In an effort to secure better manners among their subscribers the
telephone company has asked them to try to visualize the person at the
other end of the wire and to imagine that they are talking face to face.
Many times a man will say things over the telephone--rude, profane,
angry, insulting things, which he would not dream of saying if he were
actually before the man he is talking to. And to make it worse he is
often