face to face,
which in all probability we never shall, you will not know how different
from the real was the ideal."

"Please don't discourage me so soon, for I hope sometime we may clasp
hands bodily as we do now spiritually, on the wire--for we do, don't
we?" said "C" asserting before he questioned.

"Certainly--here is mine, spiritually!" responded Nattie, without the
least hesitation, as she thought, of the miles of safe distance between.
"Now may I ask--"

"Oh! come, come! this will never do! You are getting on altogether too
fast for people who were quarreling so yesterday!" broke in a third
party, who signed, "Em." and was a young lady wire-acquaintance of
Nattie's, some twenty miles distant.

"You think the circuit of our friendship ought to be broken?" queried
Nattie.

"Ah! leave that to time and change, by which all circuits are broken,"
remarked "C."

"Yes, but such a sudden friendship is sure to come to a violent end,"
Em. said. "Suppose now I should report you for talking so much--not to
say flirting--on the wire, which is against the rules you know?"

"In that event I should know how to be revenged", replied "C." "I should
put on my 'ground' wire and cut off communication between you and that
little fellow at Z!"

Em. laughed, and perhaps feeling herself rather weak on that point,
subsided, and Nattie began, "Sentiment--"

But the pretty little speech on that subject she had all ready was
spoiled by an operator--who evidently had none of it in his
soul--usurping the wire with the prefaced remark,

"Get out!"

The wire being unusually busy, this was all the conversation Nattie and
"C" had during the day, but Just before six o'clock came the call,

"B m--B m--B m--X n."

"B m," immediately responded Nattie.

"I merely want to ask for my character before saying g. n. (good night).
Haven't I been amiable to-day?" was asked from X n.

"Very, but there is no merit in it, as Mark Tapley would say," replied
Nattie. "You had no provocation."

"Now I flattered myself I had 'come out strong!' Alas! what a hard thing
it is to establish one's reputation," said "C," sagely; "but I trust to
Time, who, after all, is a pretty good fellow to right matters,
notwithstanding a dreadful careless way he has of strewing crow's feet
and wrinkles."

"Has he dropped any down your way?" asked Nattie.

"Hinting to know my age now, are you? Oh! curiosity! curiosity! Yes, I
think he has implanted a perceptible c