taken by this highly entertaining scheme of telegraphing across the
street. And Rex, his arts exhausted in vain, watched hopelessly while,
one after another, five telegrams were sent to The Montana, a hundred
feet away. The first being short two of the regulation ten words. Strong
finished with a cabalistic phrase: "Rectangular parallelopipedon."

"That'll get even Webster's Union for chargin' me two cents for 'soon',"
he chuckled. "Don't y' wish y' hadn' charged me that two cents, hey?" he
demanded of the operator, laughing joyfully and cocking his hat over one
ear, and the operator and two or three men who stood near could do no
otherwise than laugh joyfully too. Strong straightened his face into a
semblance of deep gravity. "Thish next one's important," he announced,
and put the end of the pencil in his mouth and meditated, while his
fascinated audience watched him. He was lost in thought for perhaps two
minutes, and then scribbled madly, and as he ended the little bunch of
men crowded frankly to look at what he had written. He pushed it toward
them with charming unreserve, and the bewilderment with which it was
read seemed to please him.

"Dear Papa": it ran. "I'm Calymene Blumembachii, a trilobite, one of the
crustaceans related to the emtomostracans, but looking more like a
tetradecapod, but always your affectionate--Billy."

He pushed it to the operator. "Split that in three," he ordered. "Don't
want ruin the wires I'm careful 'bout wires. Big fall snow wouldn't do
more damage 'n heavy words like that," he explained to the listening
circle. "Think I look like tetradecapod?" he asked of them as one who
makes conversation. "Had that in geology lesson when I was fifteen," he
went on. "Got lodged in crack in brain and there tish t' thish day!
Every now'n then I go 'flip,'"--he appeared to pull a light lever