She was a gentle and lovable girl, and Bell, in his
ardent and headlong way, lost his heart to her
completely; and four years later, he had the
happiness of making her his wife. Mabel Hubbard
did much to encourage Bell. She followed each
step of his progress with the keenest interest.
She wrote his letters and copied his patents. She
cheered him on when he felt himself beaten.
And through her sympathy with Bell and his ambitions,
she led her father--a widely known Boston
lawyer named Gardiner G. Hubbard--to
become Bell's chief spokesman and defender, a
true apostle of the telephone.

Hubbard first became aware of Bell's inventive
efforts one evening when Bell was visiting
at his home in Cambridge. Bell was illustrating
some of the mysteries of acoustics by the aid of
a piano. "Do you know," he said to Hubbard,
"that if I sing the note G close to the strings of
the piano, that the G-string will answer me?"
"Well, what then?" asked Hubbard. "It is
a fact of tremendous importance," replied Bell.
"It is an evidence that we may some day have
a musical telegraph, which will send as many
messages simultaneously over one wire as there
are notes on that piano."

Later, Bell ventured to confide to Hubbard
his wild dream of sending speech over an electric