The Sunday Eight O'Clock/Telephone Courtesy
"HELLO, Central. Give me two-o-two-eight, please."
"Is this two-o-two-eight?"
There was a sound of confusion at the other end of the wire as the telephone receiver clicked—a mixture of tortured piano and riot and rough house combined, out of which a harsh voice sounded.
"W-e-l-l?"
"This is Mr. Clark."
"Who?"
"Mr. Clark. I—"
"Well, what in the hell do you want? Shoot it out."
I finally succeeded in making my identity clear, and the voice softened perceptibly. What I really did want was to deliver a very important telegram to an undergraduate student.
There is little doubt that the telephone has helped to facilitate business, and that it has brought the country people nearer to each other and nearer to the town. When I was a boy and wanted to ask a girl to go out with me to singing school I had to saddle a horse and ride three or four miles to see her; now all that is necessary for a young fellow is to call her up over the telephone and ask if she has a "date" for Friday night. Whatever the telephone has done to encourage matrimony and to "put the punch" into business, it has not had an improving influence upon our manners. We employ language and tones when using the telephone which we should never dare to use if speaking face to face with a person. We insult helpless telephone girls and gro—cer boys and engage in altercations with officials in a way that would not have been possible before the days of the telephone. We ask the most unnecessary, inane, and personal questions at times most in opportune. We babble and patter and retail gossip and carry on flirtations to a shocking extent.
I have been rung out of bed at midnight to give someone the name of the president of the Menorah society, and I have been called away from a dinner party to settle a dispute between two women whose names I had never heard before as to whether or not a son of the Kaiser had been killed during the present European war. One is likely to find a man in bed or at meals if one times his calls properly, and though we should never think of calling at his house at lunch time or at midnight to settle our trifling business, we do not hesitate to call him on the telephone.
A friend of mine whose family was seriously ill last year remarked that she could have managed everything quite comfortably if it had not been for the telephone. It rang continuously from daylight to dark until it drove her half mad and wore her out. Finally she had it taken out and went to the neighbors when she needed to telephone. The worst of it is that most of us, though we complain of them, at one time or another are ourselves guilty of these discourtesies.
December