I also remember the telephone in this country when I first came here to live. Its efficiency astounded me. I would take the receiver and quietly ask for a number and then perhaps place the receiver down while I proceeded casually to light a cigarette; but before I had done so the buzzing of the instrument made me grab it again to get into touch with the man at the end of the wire, and I invariably burnt my fingers with the match, No resident coming from the Far East can help marvelling at the tele phone service of this country. I recently made the trip from San Francisco to New York vid a route which took me down into South America and over to Cuba, my' arrival in New York being about seven weeks after having left this coast. I was three thousand miles from my home, remember. Yet I took the telephone immediately I had cheeked in to my hotel, and within three minutes, on the Atlantic seaboard, was speaking to my wife on the Pacific seaboard. I wanted to get_my money's worth, and had arranged my conversation '80 that there would be the minimum of waste. I fancy that I used about 400 words of highly condensed amount of less ce-ordinated highly inpovtant conversation the other end and all for the sum of six dollars gold.
That surely is one of the finest" values in the world to-day, The connection was perfect, voice at the other end. was finitely more clear to my ear than have been scores of conversations in Shanghsi when I was telephoning from the Club to my home, Bubbling Well to say that, I would late for dinner; and the opera tion took much less time, Telephone Traffic in London Personally, I never. cease to wonder how all this is done, In the United States practically every home has its telephone, them with several cats course, the American hom 80 different from the average Brhish home, is a veritable institution, organized everywhere, the tele phone playing a very important part. The American housewife uses the telephone probably at least twenty times a day. Great Britain has something ike 1,600,000 tele phones all told, which is about halt 8 many as there are in Now York alone. It is only fair to say, how ever, that in England about £8,000,- 000 was spent last year on tele-Phone development, but the New York Telephone Company alone spent twice as much. During the last two years I understand. that the New "York company installed more new telephones than London has installed in half a century, and while the telephone traffic in Lone don is ohly 10,400,000 calls a week that number is two million "Te than the calls that are made in one day over the New York Telephone Company lines alone, Ownsa to the heat, epidemic eases have shown a decided daily, increase says the Chinese press, Faere's The
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