FullReads

That is what happens when you want to use the telephone from your end. But that is not the worst that the telephone can do. A sensible man, after a little experience, can learn to leave the thing alone. Your worst troubles are not of your own making. You are working against time; you have given instructions not to be disturbed. Perhaps it is after lunch, and you are thinking with your eyes closed, so that your thoughts shall not be distracted by the objects about the room. In either case you are anxious not to leave your chair, when off goes that telephone bell and you spring from your chair, uncertain, for the moment, whether you have been shot, or blown up with dynamite. It occurs to you in your weakness that if you persist in taking no notice, they will get tired, and leave you alone. But that is not their method. The bell rings violently at ten-second intervals. You have nothing to wrap your head up in. You think it will be better to get this business over and done with. You go to your fate and call back savagely–

“What is it? What do you want?”

No answer, only a confused murmur, prominent out of which come the voices of two men swearing at one another. The language they are making use of is disgraceful. The telephone seems peculiarly adapted for the conveyance of blasphemy. Ordinary language sounds indistinct through it; but every word those two men are saying can be heard by all the telephone subscribers in London.

It is useless attempting to listen till they have done. When they are exhausted, you apply to the tube again. No answer is obtainable. You get mad, and become sarcastic; only being sarcastic when you are not sure that anybody is at the other end to hear you is unsatisfying.

At last, after a quarter of an hour or so of saying, “Are you there?” “Yes, I’m here,” “Well?” the young lady at the Exchange asks what you want.

“I don’t want anything,” you reply.

“Then why do you keep talking?” she retorts; “you mustn’t play with the thing.”

This renders you speechless with indignation for a while, upon recovering from which you explain that somebody rang you up.

“WHO rang you up?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I wish you did,” she observes.

Generally disgusted, you slam the trumpet up and return to your chair. The instant you are seated the bell clangs again; and you fly up and demand to know what the thunder they want, and who the thunder they are.

“Don’t speak so loud, we can’t hear you. What do you want?” is the answer.

“I don’t want anything. What do you want? Why do you ring me up, and then not answer me? Do leave me alone, if you can!”

“We can’t get Hong Kongs at seventy-four.”

“Well, I don’t care if you can’t.”

“Would you like Zulus?”

“What are you talking about?” you reply; “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Would you like Zulus–Zulus at seventy-three and a half?”

“I wouldn’t have ’em at six a penny. What are you talking about?”

“Hong Kongs–we can’t get them at seventy-four. Oh, half-a-minute” (the half-a-minute passes). “Are you there?”

“Yes, but you are talking to the wrong man.”

“We can get you Hong Kongs at seventy-four and seven-eights.”

“Bother Hong Kongs, and you too. I tell you, you are talking to the wrong man. I’ve told you once.”

“Once what?”

“Why, that I am the wrong man–I mean that you are talking to the wrong man.”

“Who are you?”

“Eight-one-nine, Jones.”

“Oh, aren’t you one-nine-eight?”

“No.”

“Oh, good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

How can a man after that sit down and write pleasantly of the European crisis? And, if it were needed, herein lies another indictment against the telephone. I was engaged in an argument, which, if not in itself serious, was at least concerned with a serious enough subject, the unsatisfactory nature of human riches; and from that highly moral discussion have I been lured, by the accidental sight of the word “telephone,” into the writing of matter which can have the effect only of exciting to frenzy all critics of the New Humour into whose hands, for their sins, this book may come. Let me forget my transgression and return to my sermon, or rather to the sermon of my millionaire acquaintance.