The special kind of telephone designed to be affixed to the bedside
of one who may have the bad luck to suffer from some infectious or
contagious disease is a thoughtful provision for a crying need. By
means of the instrument so placed, the patient’s friends are able to
converse to him, read and sing at him, and, in general, give him the
benefit of their society without danger of getting back more than
they bestow. The plan is of admirable simplicity and nothing could
be better—for the friends. There must be a certain satisfaction in
possessing one end of a telephone at the other end of which there is
one who cannot get away—one who has to listen to as many helloes as may
be thought good for him, and to submit to the question, “Is that you?”
when you know that it is he, as frequently as you choose to afflict
him with it. That he is heartily wishing but impotently unable to
transmit his disorder through the wire adds something to the joy of the
situation.
One of the advantages of the sick-bed telephone lies in the fact that
it can be used for preservation of “last words.” Hitherto those only
of men who died surrounded by attentive friends have had a chance of
getting before the public; those of the unfortunate infectionary,
isolated from his race and dying in a pesthouse, assisted by hireling
physicians and unsympathetic nurses, have been lost to the world. No
matter how many years of his life the patient may have been engaged in
their composition and rehearsal; no matter how “neat and opprobrious”
they were, they fell upon unappreciative ears, and were not recorded.
Under the new _régime_ the patient as his fire fails may summon his
friends to the telephone, launch at them his Parthian platitude and
die in the pleasant consciousness that posterity will have profit of
his death. Whether, like Falstaff, he choose to give his remarks a
reminiscent character and “babble o’ green fields;” confine himself
to the historical method, like Daniel Webster with his memorable “I
still live;” assume the benevolent pose, and, like Charles II, urge
the survivors not to let some “poor Nelly” starve; the exclamatory,
like the late President Garfield, who, according to one Swaim, said
“O Swaim!” and let it go at that; or the merely idiotic, like the
great Napoleon with his “_Tête d’armée_,” the faithful telephone will
be there, ready and willing to transmit (and transmute) the sentiment,
admonition, statement or whatever it may be.
To persons intending to make this use of the telephone a word of
counsel may not be impertinent. As no human being, however well-eared,
ever understood the telephone until it had repeated itself a number of
times in response to his demands for more light, and as the moribund
are not commonly in very good voice, it will be wise to begin the “last
words” while there is yet a little reserve fund of life and strength
remaining, for repetition and explanation.