gm. A current of electricity is thus induced, pulsates along
the wire to the other end, and is delivered to the metallic disk of
the second instrument, many miles away, just as it was produced in the
first. The ear of the hearer receives from the second instrument the
exact physical equivalent of the sound, or sounds, which were
delivered against the disk of the first instrument, and thus the
utterance is received at a distance just as it was given forth.

As already said, the invention of the telephone stands chiefly to the
credit of Professors Gray and Bell. It should be recorded that as
early as 1837, the philosopher Page succeeded, by means of
electro-magnetism, in transmitting _musical_ tones to a distance. It
was not, however, until 1877 that Professer Bell, in a public lecture
given at Salem, Mass., astonished his audience, and the whole country
as well, by receiving and transmitting _vocal_ messages from Boston,
twenty miles away. Incredulity had no more a place as it respected the
feasibility of talking to persons at a distance. The experiments of
Gray at Chicago, a few days later in the same month, were equally
successful. Messages were distinctly delivered between that city and
Milwaukee, a distance of eighty-five miles, nor could it be longer
doubted that a new era in the means of communication had come.

The Bell telephone, with its many modifications and improvements, has
come into rapid use. Within reasonable limits of distance, the new
method of transmitting intelligence by direct vocal utterance, has
taken the place of all slower and less convenient means of
intercommunication. The appearance of the simple instrument has been
one of the many harbingers of the oncoming better time, when the
interchange of thought and sentiment between man and man, community
and community, nation and nation, and race and race shall be the
preliminary of universal peace in the world and of the good-fellowship
of mankind.

Every such fact as the invention of the telephone, produces a complex
and almost indescribable result in human society. This result has in
it, in the first place, a change in the manners and method of the
individual There is also a change in his sentiments. He whose work in
life, whatever it may be, is accomplished in touch with the telephone
will realize that he is in touch with the whole world. This intimacy
reaches, first, his neighbors and friends. He seems to live henceforth
in their presence, and