the retort courteous. "Is this an engine or a steam heater?" he asks.
"What pressure does she carry?"
"She never heats at all except when I run a long time on low," Chet says
eagerly.
"Oh, yes," says Pelty, "I never have to go into low much--"
"Gosh!" Chet explodes. "When you go up Sanders Hill, they have to close
two district schools for the noise."
"Only time you ever heard me I was hauling you up with your broken
jack-shaft," snorts Pelty. "You ought to get some iron parts for your
car. Cheese has gone out of style."
"You still use it for tires, I see," says Chet.
"Never mind," says Pelty wrathfully. "I get mileage out of my machine; I
don't drive around town and then spend two days shoveling out carbon."
"Peculiar radiator you've got," says Chet, changing the subject. "Oh, I
see; it's a road sprinkler. What do you get from the city for laying the
dust?"
"I can stop that leak in two minutes with a handful of corn meal," says
Pelty, busily surveying Chet's machine. "Do you still strip a gear on
this thing every time you try to back?"
"Why do you carry a horn?" asks Chet. "You're wasteful; I heard your
valves chattering when I was three blocks away."
"I didn't hear yours chatter much last Tuesday on Main Street," snorts
Pelty. "You cranked that thing long enough to grind it home by hand."
"Ya-a! Talk, will you?" yells Chet earnestly. "Any man who begins
carrying hot water out to his machine in a teakettle in September knows
a lot about starting cars."
"Well, get down to business," says Pelty. "You want to trade, you say.
I don't want that mess. It's an old back-number with tin springs, glass
gears and about as much compression as a bandbox. Give me five hundred
dollars and throw your automobile in. I need something to tie my cow to.
She'd haul away anything that was movable."
"Give you five hundred dollars for that parody on a popcorn wagon?"
snorts Chet. "Why, man, the poor old thing has to go into low to pull
its shadow! You're delirious, Pelty. I'll tell you what I'll do. You
give me a thousand dollars for my car, and I'll agree to haul that old
calliope up to my barn, out of your way, and make a hen roost out of it.
Come on now. It's your only chance."
Shortly after this they are parted by anxious friends, and the show is
over. I've known Homeburg men to give up a trip to Chicago because Chet
and Pelty began to trade their autos just before train time.
In New York an auto means comfort and pleasure and advertisement, like a
fur-lined overcoat with a Persian lamb collar. But in Homeburg it means
a lot more. It keeps us busy and happy and full of conversation and
debate. It pulls our old, retired farmers out of their shells and makes
them yell for improvements. It unbuckles our tight-wads and gives our
ingenious young loafers something to do. It promotes town pride, and it
keeps our money circulating so fast that every one has a chance to grasp
a chunk as it goes by.
It has made us so independent of railroads that we feel now when buying
a ticket to Chicago as if we were helping the poor old line out. Our
Creamery has been collecting milk and shipping butter in an old roadster
with a wagon bed thorax for a year. Two of our rural route mail carriers
use small machines, except in wet weather, and good-roads societies in
our vicinity are the latest fad. We raised one thousand five hundred
dollars last spring to bring the Cannon Ball Trail from Chicago to
Kansas City through our town, and our hotel-keeper contributed one
hundred dollars of it. He says we'll be on the gas-line tourist route to
the coast after the trail has been marked and drained and graded up
well.
But mostly the automobile means freedom to us. We're no longer citizens
of Homeburg but of the congressional district. We're neighbors to towns
we hadn't heard of ten years ago, and the horizon nowadays for most of
us is located at the end of a ten-gallon tank of gasoline. Why, in the
old days, you had to go fifty miles east and double back to get into the
north part of our county, and more of us had crossed the ocean than had
been to Pallsbury in the north tier of townships. Now our commercial
clubs meet together alternate months, and about seventeen babies in our
town have proud grandparents up there.
That's part of what the automobile means to us, Jim. Can you blame me
for being so interested in a new one? Maybe it will have some
contrivance for scaring cows out of a narrow road.
X
THE HOMEBURG TELEPHONE EXCHANGE
_What Would Happen if We Tried to Get Along With a City Operator_
All right, Jim! Having now completed the task of telephoning to Murray
Hill several thousand and something, I'm ready to join you at luncheon.
I'm glad I telephoned. I won't have to spend the afternoon doing it now
and, besides, I feel so triumphant. I got through this time without
forgetting to get a nickel first. I usually go into one of those wooden
overcoats and go through all the agonies of elbowing my way through half
a dozen centrals into some one's ear several miles away, and then
discover that I haven't anything but a half dollar. Then I have to stop
and begin all over again.
Telephoning is one of the prices you have to pay to live in a
metropolis, Jim. I suppose it will always hurt me to pay a nickel for
telephoning. Seems like paying for a lungful of air--and bad air at
that. Coming as I do from the simple bosom of the nation, where talk
over the wires is so cheap that you sometimes have to wait half an hour
while two women are planning a church social over your line, I can't
seem to resign myself to paying the price of a street-car ride every
time I breathe a few sentiments into a telephone. Now the street cars
never fail to dazzle me. They are a wonderful bargain. When we are too
tired to walk in Homeburg, we have to pay at least fifty cents for a
horse from the livery stable, unless some automobile is going our way.
Nothing is more pleasant to me than to slip a nickel to a street-car
conductor and ride ten miles on it. But when we want to use a telephone,
do we go through all this ceremony of dropping a nickel into a set of
chimes? Not much. My bill at home at five cents per telephone call would
be more than my income. Why, many a time I've called up as many as eight
people in the west part of town to know whether the red glow in the sky
was the sunset or the Rolling Mills at Paynesville burning down! And
almost every day I telephone McMuggins, the druggist, to collar a small
boy and send up an Eltarvia Cigar. If that call cost me five cents, I
would be practically smoking ten-cent cigars, and all Homeburg would
regard me with suspicion.
I suppose it will be a hundred years before we get over saying "Great
invention, isn't it?" every time we have finished a satisfactory session
over the telephone. But I don't think you city people realize how much
of an invention it is. Of course, the telephone is more important in
New York than it is in Homeburg. If you had to go back to the
old-fashioned stationary messenger boy to do your business here, a good
share of the city would have to close out at a sacrifice. You do things
with your telephones which dazzle us entirely, like talking into parlor
cars, calling up steamships, buying a railroad and saying airily "Charge
it," and tossing a few hectic words over to Pittsburgh or Cincinnati at
five dollars per remark, as casually as I would stop in and ask
Postmaster Flint why in thunder the Chicago papers were late again--and
that is about as casual as anything I know of.
I'm willing to admit that your telephones are much more wonderful than
ours, not only because of what they do for you, but because of the
amount of money they can get out of you without causing revolutions and
indignation meetings. Why, they tell me that business firms here think
nothing of paying one hundred dollars a year for a telephone! At home
once, when we tried to raise the farmer lines from fifty cents to a
dollar a month, we almost had to fortify the town. I take off my hat to
a telephone which can collect one hundred dollars a year from its user
without using thumbscrews. It must have more ways of working for you
than I have ever dreamed of.
No, the telephone in Homeburg is a very ordinary thing, and we could get
along without it quite nicely as far as exertion is concerned, it being
only a mile from end to end of the town. But if we had to do without our
telephone girls, we'd turn the whole town into a lodge of sorrow and
refuse to be comforted. I know of no grander invention than the country
town telephone girl. She's not only our servant and master, but she's
our watch-dog, guardian, memorandum book, guide, philosopher and family
friend. When our telephone can't give us convenience enough, she
supplies the lack. When brains at both ends are scarce, she dumps hers
into the pot; and when the poor overworked instrument falls down on any
task, she takes up the job. She not only gives our telephone a voice,
but she gives it feet and hands and something to think with.
I got into a big telephone exchange once and watched it for over a
minute before I was fired out. It was a very impressive sight--rows on
rows of switchboards, hundreds of girls, thousands of little flashing
lights, millions of clickety-clicks and not enough conversation to run a
sewing circle up to refreshment time. The company was very proud of it,
and I suppose it was good enough for a city--but, pshaw, it wouldn't do
Homeburg for a day. If some one were to offer that entire exchange to us
free of charge, we'd struggle along with it for a few hours, and then
we'd rise up en masse and trade it off for Carrie Mason, our chief
operator, throwing in whatever we had to, to boot.
Our exchange is in the back room of the bank building up-stairs. You
could put the entire equipment in a dray. Our switchboard is about as
big as an old-fashioned china closet and has three hundred drops. I
suppose an up-to-date telephone manager has forgotten what "drops" are
and you can't be expected to know. But out our way the telephone
companies are coöperative, and as every subscriber owns a share, we all
take a deep personal interest in the construction and operation of the
plant, discussing the need of a new switchboard and the advantage of
cabling the Main Street lead, in technical terms.
Well, anyway, a drop is a little brass door which falls down with a
clatter whenever the telephone which is hitched to that particular drop
wants a connection. And Miss Carrie Mason, our chief operator, sits on
a high stool with a receiver strapped over her rick of blond hair
jabbing brass plugs with long cords attached into the right holes with
unerring accuracy, and a reach which would give her a tremendous
advantage in any boarding-house in the land. Sometimes she has one
assistant, and in rush hours she has two. But on Sunday afternoons and
other quiet times she holds down the whole job alone for hours at a
time; and when I go up to her citadel and ask her to jam a toll call
through forty miles of barbed wire and miscellaneous junk to Taledo by
sheer wrist and lung power, she entertains me as follows while I wait:
"Yes, indeed, I'll get your call through as soon as I can, but the
connection's--Nmbr--awful--Nmbr--bad to-day--Nmbr--They're not at home,
Mrs. Simmons; they went to Paynesville--Nmbr--I'll ring
again--Nmbr--Hello, Doctor Simms, Mrs. McCord told me to tell you to
come right out to the farm; the baby's sick--Nmbr--The train's late
to-day, Mrs. Bane, you've got plenty of time--Nmbr--I can't get them,
Mrs. Frazier. I'll call up next door and leave word for them to call
you--Nmbr (To me: "Hot to-day, isn't it? I tell 'em we ought to have an
electric fan up here.")--Nmbr--("It would keep us better
tempered.")--Nmbr--Oh, Mrs. Horn, will you tell Mrs. Flint when she
comes home that Mrs. Frazier wants her to call her up?--Nmbr--Now,
Jimmy, you haven't waited two seconds. I know you're anxious to talk to
Phoeb, but she isn't home; she's at the cooking club--Nmbr--Cambridge,
do see if you can't get through to Taledo. I've a party here that's in a
hurry--Nmbr. (To me: "That Taledo line's awful. It's grounded somewhere
on that farmer's line west of Tacoma.")--Nmbr--Yes, Mr. Bell, I'll call
you quick as he comes in his office; I can see his door from my
window--Nmbr--No, Mrs. Bane, the doctor's just gone out to the McCord
farm. If you hurry, you can stop him as he goes past. He left about five
minutes ago--Nmbr--Gee, Paynesville, you gave me an awful ring in the
ear then! No, you can't get through, the line's busy. Well, you'll have
to wait. I can't take the line away from them--Nmbr--Oh! (very softly)
Hello, Sam. Oh, pretty well. I'm most melted--wait a
minute--Nmbr--Hello, Sam (long silence) Oh, get out! My ear's all full
of taffy--wait a minute--Nmbr--Nmbr--No, Mr. Martin, there hasn't been
any one in his office all day. I think he's gone to Chicago--Hello,
Sam--wait a minute, Sam--Nmbr--Nmbr--Hello, Sam--Say, I'm all alone and
jumping sidewise. Call me up about six (very softly). G'by, Sam--Nmbr.
Oh, Mrs. Lucey, is Mrs. Simms at your house? Tell her her husband will
be home late to supper, he's gone out in the country--Hello. Hello.
_Hello_, Taledo. Is your party ready? (To me: "All right, here they are.
You'll have to talk pretty loud.") Hello, Taledo. All ready--Nmbr."
That is a fair sample of Carrie. We couldn't keep house without her. And
that's why I feel an awful pang of jealousy when I hear that lobster Sam
talking to her. Maybe it's just the ordinary joshing which goes on over
the toll lines in the off hours. But maybe it isn't. Wherever Sam is and
whoever he is, he is a danger to Homeburg. Perhaps he is a lineman at
Paynesville, and then again he may be a grocer in some crossroads town
near by, with a toll telephone in the back of his store. But if he talks
to Carrie long enough and skilfully enough, he will come up to Homeburg,
marry her, and bear her away to his lair, far from our bereaved ears.
We've lost several telephone girls that way, and when a telephone girl
knows all of your habits and customs and those of your friends, and can
tell just where to find you or to find whomever you want found, and has
the business of the town down to the smallest details stowed away in her
capable head, it messes things up dreadfully to have her leave us high
and dry and go to housekeeping--which any one can do.
Telephone girls are born, not made, in towns like Homeburg. We require
so much more of them than city folks do. When my wife wants to know if
hats are being worn at an afternoon reception, she calls up Carrie. Ten
to one Carrie has caught a scrap of conversation over the line and
knows. But if she hasn't, she will call up and find out. When a doctor
leaves his office to make a call, he calls up Carrie, and she faithfully
pursues him through town and country all day, if necessary. When we are
preparing for a journey, we do not go down to the depot until we have
called up Carrie and have found out if the train is on time, and if it
isn't, we ask her to call us when it is discovered by the telegraph
operator. And when our babies wander away, we no longer run frantically
up and down the street hunting for them. We ask Carrie to advertise for
a lost child seven hands high, and wearing a four-hour-old face-wash;
and within five minutes she has called up fifteen people in various
parts of the town and has discovered that said child is playing Indian
in some back yard a few blocks away.
Carrie is also our confidante. I hate to think of the number of things
Carrie knows. Prowling into our lines while we are talking, as she does,
in search of connections to take down, she overhears enough gossip to
turn Homeburg into a hotbed of anarchy if she were to loose it. But she
doesn't. Carrie keeps all the secrets that a thousand other women
can't. She knows what Mrs. Wimble Horn said to Mrs. Ackley over the
line which made Mrs. Ackley so mad that the two haven't spoken for three
years. She knows just who of our citizens telephone to Paynesville when
Homeburg goes dry, and order books, shoes, eggs, and hard-boiled shirts
from the saloons up there to be sent by express in a plain package. She
knows who calls up Lutie Briggs every night or two from Paynesville, and
young Billy Madigan would give worlds for the information, reserving
only enough for a musket or some other duelling weapon. She knows how
hard it is for one of our supposedly prosperous families to get credit
and how long they have to talk to the grocer before he will subside for
another month.
There's very little that Carrie doesn't know. I shudder to think what
would happen if Carrie should get miffed and begin to divulge. Once we
had a telephone girl who did this. She was a pert young thing who had
come to town with her family a short time before. It was a mistake to
hire her--telephone girls should be watched and tested for discretion
from babyhood up--but our directors did it, and because she showed a
passion for literature and gum and very little for work, they fired her
in three months. She left with reluctance, but she talked with
enthusiasm; and Homeburg was an armed camp for a long time.
Goodness knows we have enough trouble with our telephone even with
Carrie to supply discretion for the whole town. Party lines and rubber
ears are the source of all our woe. You know what a party line is, of
course. It's a line on which you can have a party and gab merrily back
and forth for forty minutes, while some other subscriber is wildly
dancing with impatience. Most of our lines have four subscribers apiece,
and it's just as hard to live in friendliness on a party line as it is
for four families to get along good-naturedly in the same house.
There's Mrs. Sim Askinson, for instance. She's a good woman and her pies
have produced more deep religious satisfaction at the Methodist church
socials than many a sermon. But St. Peter himself couldn't live on the
same telephone line with her. She's polite and refined in any other way,
but when she gets on a telephone line she's a hostile monopolist. Early
in the morning she grabs it and holds it fiercely against all comers,
while talking with her friends about the awful time she had the night
before when the cold water faucet in the kitchen began to drip. Mrs.
Askinson can talk an hour on this fertile subject, stopping each minute
or two to say, with the most corrosive dignity, to some poor victim who
is wiggling his receiver hook: "Please get off this line, whoever you
are. Haven't you any manners? I'm talking, and I'll talk till I get
through." And then, like as not, when she's through, she'll leave the
receiver down so that no one else will be able to talk--thus holding the
line in instant readiness when another fit of conversation comes on.
Seven party lines have revolted in succession and have demanded that
Mrs. Askinson be taken off and wished on to some one else, and Sim is
mighty worried. His wife has lost him so many friends that he doubts if
he will be able to run for the town board next year.
We're a nice, peaceable folk in Homeburg, face to face. But like every
one else, we lay aside our manners when we get on the wires and push and
elbow each other a good deal. Funny what a difference it makes when you
are talking into a formless void to some strange human voice. I've never
said: "Get out of here," to any one in my office yet, but when some one
intrudes on my electric conversation, even by mistake, I boil with rage
and I yell with the utmost fervor and indignation: "Get off this line!
Don't you know any better than to ring in?" And the other person comes
right back with: "Well, you big hog, I've waited ten minutes, and I'll
ring all I want!" And then I say something more, and something is said
to me that eats a little semicircular spot out of the edge of my ear.
It's mighty lucky neither of us knows who is talking. Suppose Carrie
should tell. As I say, Carrie holds us in the hollow of her hand.
But the rubber ear is even worse than the Berkshire manners. A rubber
ear is one that is always stretching itself over some telephone line to
hear a conversation which doesn't concern it. For a long time we were
singularly obtuse about this little point of etiquette in the country.
The fact that all the bells on a line rang with every call was a
constant temptation to sit in when we weren't wanted. We listened to
other people's conversations when we felt like it. It amused us, and why
shouldn't we? We rented our telephone and we had a right to pick it up
and soak in everything that was going through it.
When the exchange was first put in, fifteen years ago, more than one
Homeburg woman used to wash her dishes with the telephone receiver
strapped tightly to her ear, dropping into the conversation whenever she
felt that she could contribute something of interest. As for the country
lines, it was the regular thing, and nobody minded it at all. That was
what killed the first line out of Homeburg. It had fourteen subscribers
and every one was hitched on the same wire. For a month everything went
nicely. Then old man Miller got mad at two neighbors who were sort of
sizing him up over the wire, and quit speaking to them. And Mrs. Ames
was caught gossiping, and a quarrel ensued in which about half the line
took part, all being on the wire and handy. Young Frank Anderson heard
Barney DeWolf making an engagement with his girl and licked Barney. One
thing led to another until not a subscriber would speak to another one,
and the line just naturally pined away.
Etiquette has tightened up a lot since then. Still, we have rubber ears
to-day, and they cause half the trouble in Homeburg. You see, the
telephone has entirely driven out the back fence as a medium of gossip.
It offers so much wider opportunities. Nowadays it does all the business
which begins with: "Don't breathe this to a soul, but I just heard--"
and half the time some uninvited listener with an ear like a graphophone
horn is drinking in the details, to be published abroad later. Mrs. Cal
Saunders had our worst case of gummy ear up to a couple of years ago,
and broke up two engagements by listening too much. But she doesn't do
it any more. Clayt Emerson cured her.
Something had to be done for the good of the town and Clayt, who lived
on the same line with her, conceived the plan of letting Mrs. Saunders
hear something worth while just to keep her busy and happy. So he called
up Wimble Horn and talked casually until he heard the little click which
meant that Mrs. Saunders had focused her large receptive ear on the
conversation. Then he told Horn that he was going to burn the darn stuff
up, trade being bad, anyway. Wimble offered to help him, and for three
nights they talked mysteriously about the crime, mentioning more
plotters, while Mrs. Cal hung on the line with her eyes bulging out, and
confided the secret to all the friends she had.
Finally on Friday night, Policeman Costello, who was in the deal, told
Clayt that the expected had happened and that Mrs. Saunders had told
him about the horrible incendiary plot which was being hatched. Saturday
night came, and Costello refused to go to Clayt's store unless Mrs.
Saunders would come and denounce the villains, who were among our most
respected citizens. So Mrs. Saunders finally agreed, in fear and
trembling, and, taking a couple of her firmest friends, she led
Policeman Costello down to Clayt's restaurant at midnight, and, sure
enough, there was a light in the back part. Costello burst open the
door, and when they all rushed down on the scene of the crime, they
found Clayt and half a dozen of us manfully smoking up a box of stogies
which a slick traveling man had unloaded on him. Mrs. Saunders insisted
that crime was about to be committed and got so excited that she
repeated Clayt's exact words--in the middle of which a great light came
to her, and she said she was going home.
"I think you had better," said Clayt, "and I'll tell you something more.
You listen to other people's affairs more than is good for you."
But she hasn't since.