alling of
overhead wires, charged with high-tension current, upon telegraph and
telephone wires below. The danger is so great and damage so serious that,
at Philadelphia, Mr. Plush, the electrician to the Telephone Company, has
devised this exceedingly pretty cut-out. It is a little electro-magnetic
cut-out that breaks the telephone circuit whenever a current passes into
the circuit equal to or more than an ampere. The arrangement works with
great ease. It is applied to every telephone circuit simply, to protect
the telephone system from electric light wires, that ought never to be
allowed anywhere near a telephone circuit.

Fire-alarms are used in America; but in England, also, the fire systems of
Edward Bright, Spagnoletti, and Higgins have been introduced, and in that
respect we are in very near the same position as our friends on the other
side of the Atlantic. Some members present may remember that, when I
described my last visit to America, I mentioned how in Chicago the
fire-alarm was worked by an electric method, and I told you a story then
that you did not believe, and which I have told over and over again, but
nobody has yet believed me, and I began to think that I must have made a
mistake somewhere or other. So I meant, when at Chicago this time, to see
whether I had been deceived myself. There was very little room for
improvement, because, as I told you before, they had very near reached
perfection. This is what they did: At the corner of the street where a
fire-alarm box is fixed, a handle is pulled down, and the moment that
handle is released a current goes to the fire-station; it sounds a gong to
call the attention of the men, it unhitches the harness of the horses, the
horses run to their allotted positions at the engine, it whips the clothes
off every man who is in bed, it opens a trap at the bottom of the bed and
the men slide down into their positions on the engine. The whole of that
operation takes only six seconds. The perfection to which fire-alarm
business has been brought in the States is one of the most interesting
applications of electricity there.

Of course during this visit I waited on Mr. Edison. Many of you know that
a difference took place between Mr. Edison and myself, and I must confess
that I felt a little anxiety as to how I should be received on the other
side. It is impossible for any man to receive another with greater
kindness and attention than Mr. Edison received me. He took me