our fault entirely, and not hers.

CHAPTER XIV

_Telephones and Telephoning_

MOST men--and women--use more nervous force in speaking through the
telephone than would be needed to keep them strong and healthy for
years.

It is good to note that the more we keep in harmony with natural laws
the more quiet we are forced to be.

Nature knows no strain. True science knows no strain. Therefore _a
strained high-pitched voice does not carry over the telephone wire as
well as a low one._

If every woman using the telephone would remember this fact the good
accomplished would be thricefold. She would save her own nervous
energy. She would save the ears of the woman at the other end of the
wire. She would make herself heard.

Patience, gentleness, firmness--a quiet concentration--all tell
immeasurably over the telephone wire.

Impatience, rudeness, indecision, and diffuseness blur communication by
telephone even more than they do when one is face to face with the
person talking.

It is as if the wire itself resented these inhuman phases of humanity
and spit back at the person who insulted it by trying to transmit over
it such unintelligent bosh.

There are people who feel that if they do not get an immediate answer
at the telephone they have a right to demand and get good service by
means of an angry telephonic sputter.

The result of this attempt to scold the telephone girl is often an
impulsive, angry response on her part--which she may be sorry for later
on--and if the service is more prompt for that time it reacts later to
what appears to be the same deficiency.

No one was ever kept steadily up to time by angry scolding. It is
against reason.

To a demanding woman who is strained and tired herself, a wait of ten
seconds seems ten minutes. I have heard such a woman ring the telephone
bell almost without ceasing for fifteen minutes. I could hear her
strain and anger reflected in the ringing of the bell. When finally she
"got her party" the strain in her high-pitched voice made it impossible
for her to be clearly understood. Then she got angry again because
"Central" had not "given her a better connection," and finally came
away from the telephone nearly in a state of nervous collapse and
insisted that the telephone would finally end her life. I do not think
she once suspected that the whole state of fatigue which had almost
brought an illness upon her was absolutely and entirely her own fault.

The