I restored the receiver. On the horrified face of the deputation I could
read the unspoken query: "Is it conceivable that you have been in this
country a month without understanding that the United States is
primarily nothing but a vast congeries of telephone-cabins?" Yes, I
yielded and admired! And I surmise that on my next visit I shall find a
telephone on every table of every restaurant that respects itself.

[Illustration: AT MORN POURING CONFIDENCES INTO HER TELEPHONE]

It is the efficiency of the telephone that makes it irresistible to a
great people whose passion is to "get results"--the instancy with which
the communication is given, and the clear loudness of the telephone's
voice in reply to yours: phenomena utterly unknown in Europe. Were I to
inhabit the United States, I too should become a victim of the telephone
habit, as it is practised in its most advanced form in those suburban
communities to which I have already incidentally referred at the end of
the previous chapter. There a woman takes to the telephone as women in
more decadent lands take to morphia. You can see her at morn at her
bedroom window, pouring confidences into her telephone, thus
combining the joy of an innocent vice with the healthy freshness of
breeze and sunshine. It has happened to me to sit in a drawing-room,
where people gathered round the telephone as Europeans gather round a
fire, and to hear immediately after the ejaculation of a number into the
telephone a sharp ring from outside through the open window, and then to
hear in answer to the question, "What are you going to wear to-night?"
two absolutely simultaneous replies, one loudly from the telephone
across the room, and the other faintlier from a charming human voice
across the garden: "I don't know. What are you?" Such may be the
pleasing secondary scientific effect of telephoning to the lady next
door on a warm afternoon.