ook on his face changed to one of
the utmost amazement. "It says--`The cat and the fiddle,'" he gasped,
and forthwith he became a convert to telephony. By such tests the men
of science were won over, and by the middle of 1877 Bell received a
"vociferous welcome" when he addressed them at their annual convention
at Plymouth.

Soon afterwards, The London Times surrendered. It whirled
right-about-face and praised the telephone to the skies. "Suddenly and
quietly the whole human race is brought within speaking and hearing
distance," it exclaimed; "scarcely anything was more desired and more
impossible." The next paper to quit the mob of scoffers was the Tatler,
which said in an editorial peroration, "We cannot but feel im-pressed by
the picture of a human child commanding the subtlest and strongest force
in Nature to carry, like a slave, some whisper around the world."

Closely after the scientists and editors came the nobility. The Earl of
Caithness led the way. He declared in public that "the telephone is the
most extraordinary thing I ever saw in my life." And one wintry morning
in 1878 Queen Victoria drove to the house of Sir Thomas Biddulph, in
London, and for an hour talked and listened by telephone to Kate
Field, who sat in a Downing Street office. Miss Field sang "Kathleen
Mavourneen," and the Queen thanked her by telephone, saying she was
"immensely pleased." She congratulated Bell himself, who was present,
and asked if she might be permitted to buy the two telephones; whereupon
Bell presented her with a pair done in ivory.

This incident, as may be imagined, did much to establish the reputation
of telephony in Great Britain. A wire was at once strung to Windsor
Castle. Others were ordered by the Daily News, the Persian Ambassador,
and five or six lords and baronets. Then came an order which raised the
hopes of the telephone men to the highest heaven, from the banking house
of J. S. Morgan & Co. It was the first recognition from the "seats of
the mighty" in the business and financial world. A tiny exchange,
with ten wires, was promptly started in London; and on April 2d, 1879,
Theodore Vail, the young manager of the Bell Company, sent an order
to the factory in Boston, "Please make one hundred hand telephones for
export trade as early as possible." The foreign trade had begun.

Then there came a thunderbolt out of a blue sky, a wholly unforeseen
disaster. Just as a few energetic companies were sprouting up, the