Everybody knows now of the telephone and its large usefulness. It was
not so, however, back in the seventies. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell had
hard work to arouse interest, and harder yet to enlist capital, in his
invention. In an account of the struggles of those early days, the
following incident appears:
He resolved on a desperate move, and he went to Chauncey M.
Depew and offered him a one-sixth interest in the company if he
would loan $10,000 to put the company on its feet. Depew took
a week to consider the proposition. At the end of the week he
wrote back that the incident might be considered closed. The
telephone was a clever idea, but it was utterly lacking in
commercial possibilities, and $10,000 was far too big a sum to
risk in marketing an instrument that at best could never be more
than a source of amusement.
Thus Depew let slip an opportunity to acquire for $10,000
an interest that to-day could not be bought for less than
$25,000,000.
(2261)
* * * * *
The New York _Sun_ is authority for the following story:
A Provincetown man, out on his first trip as captain of a
whaling-vessel, about thirty years ago, stopt at one of the
West India Islands on his way home. One of the natives offered
him five small lumps of a dirty-looking substance which the
native asserted was good for something. The native further
informed the captain that he had got these pieces from a dead
whale which was ashore on a certain beach and that there was
plenty more in the carcass.
Did the captain hoist all sail and get to that dead whale as
fast as the winds of Providence would permit? Not a bit of it.
He had been made captain for the purpose of going after sperm
oil, and he concluded that he’d better stick to his job. So he
gave the native a pair of blue overalls and a jumper for the
five dirty lumps and went on his way.
After he had made port he showed the five lumps to Mr. Stull,
and when the latter gave him $700 for them he almost had a fit.
Still that shock was nothing to what he got a little later, for
he learned that another captain had heard of the dead whale, had
got what ambergris still remained in the carcass and had sold it
in New York for $30,000. It was estimated that this whale must
have contained in all at least $50,000 worth of ambergris.
(2262)
=Opportunity Seized=--See SUPPLY AND DEMAND.