So at least I always feel toward the wall of my apartment every time I
call up her whom my soul loveth that dwelleth far away in Massachusetts.
She being a Capulet and I a Montague, it would go hard with us for
communication, were it not for this long-distance wall; and any one
who knows anything of love knows that the primal need of lovers is
communication. Lovers have so deep a distrust of each other's love that
they need to be assured of it from hour to hour. To the philosopher it
may well seem strange that this certitude should thus be in need of
progressive corroboration. But so it is, and the pampered modern lover
may well wonder how his great-grandfather and great-grandmother
supported the days, or even kept their love alive, on such famine
rations as a letter once a month. A letter once a month! They must have
had enormous faith in each other, those lovers of old-time, or they must
have suffered as we can hardly bear to think of--we, who write to each
other twice a day, telegraph three times, telephone six, and transmit a
phonographic record of our sighs to each other night and morn. The
telephone has made a toy of distance and made of absence, in many cases,
a sufficient presence. It is almost worth while to be apart on occasion
just for the sake of bringing each other so magically near. It is the
Arabian Nights come true. As in them, you have only to say a word, and
the jinn of the electric fire is waiting for your commands. The word
has changed. Once it was "Abracadabra." Now it is "Central." But the
miracle is just the same.

One might almost venture upon the generalization that most tragedies
have come about from lack of a telephone. Of course, there are
exceptions, but as a rule tragedies happen through delays in
communication.

If there had been a telephone in Mantua, Romeo would never have bought