Homeburg Memories

We Tried to Get Along

noon 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 agonie

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

n 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,

on 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

row 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 enou

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

ps. 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 co?perative, and as every subscriber owns a s

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 o

mmy, 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 t

eman 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 te

fice 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 b

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

ho 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

hat 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 impatienc

ng 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

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'

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 l

body 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 c

ch 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 d

n 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

e 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

ll tell you something more. You listen to oth

hasn't

ephens, who has one hundred thousand dollars loaned out on mortgages and spends half an hour picking out the biggest eggs when he buys half a dozen. There isn't a farm within ten miles which isn't connected with the town, and while the desk 'phone is a novelty with us and we still have to grind away at a handle to get Central, we can put just as much conversation into the transmitter and take j