d to talk to one another in their own language, via the
telephone. At a second lecture a band played "The Star-Spangled Banner,"
in Boston, and was heard by an audience of two thousand people in
Providence. At a third, Signor Ferranti, who was in Providence, sang a
selection from "The Marriage of Figaro" to an audience in Boston. At a
fourth, an exhortation from Moody and a song from Sankey came over the
vibrating wire. And at a fifth, in New Haven, Bell stood sixteen Yale
professors in line, hand in hand, and talked through their bodies--a
feat which was then, and is to-day, almost too wonderful to believe.

Very slowly these lectures, and the tireless activity of Hubbard, pushed
back the ridicule and the incredulity; and in the merry month of May,
1877, a man named Emery drifted into Hubbard's office from the near-by
city of Charlestown, and leased two telephones for twenty actual
dollars--the first money ever paid for a telephone. This was the first
feeble sign that such a novelty as the telephone business could be
established; and no money ever looked handsomer than this twenty dollars
did to Bell, Sanders, Hubbard, and Watson. It was the tiny first-fruit
of fortune.

Greatly encouraged, they prepared a little circular which was the first
advertisement of the telephone business. It is an oddly simple little
document to-day, but to the 1877 brain it was startling. It modestly
claimed that a telephone was superior to a telegraph for three reasons:

"(1) No skilled operator is required, but direct communication may be
had by speech without the intervention of a third person.

"(2) The communication is much more rapid, the average number of words
transmitted in a minute by the Morse sounder being from fifteen to
twenty, by telephone from one to two hundred.

"(3) No expense is required, either for its operation or repair. It
needs no battery and has no complicated machinery. It is unsurpassed for
economy and simplicity."

The only telephone line in the world at this time was between the
Williams' workshop in Boston and the home of Mr. Williams in Somerville.
But in May, 1877, a young man named E. T. Holmes, who was running a
burglar-alarm business in Boston, proposed that a few telephones be
linked to his wires. He was a friend and customer of Williams, and
suggested this plan half in jest and half in earnest. Hubbard was quick
to seize this opportunity, and at once lent Holmes a dozen telephones.
Without