The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1899-08-10
"HELLOS" FOR CHINESE.
San Francisco kitchens Fitted %
with Telephones for the
Cooks.

In San Francisco, where cooking and
the matters pertaining to the kitchen
are the subject OF more thought than in
the east, there has been introduced what
is known as the kitchen telephone, and
it has been voted such an unqualified
success that no well appointed house in
California is without hello machine"
in its kitchen.
The maid of all work and the kitchen
fairy of the Pacific coast is a Chinaman.
This peculiar feature of the far west
has not vet come into favor in the east,
but those Americans who have tried it
say that there is no superior to the Zig
tailed chef and the addition of an al
mond-eyed president of the kitchen
ton of overcoming the national COM
plant of dyspepsia.
But to send the cook out to order the
dinner was found to be accompanied by
various drawbacks. The tradesmen
were disposed to guy" the celestials;
the celestials were not averse to pay
ing visit TO the nearest fan-tan game
when sent on an errand and the troubles
that followed in the train of this dere-
LECTION of duty were almost too numer-
Gus to enumerate. So the Californian
housewives set about to discover some
means of communicates with the pro-
vision dealer, the grocery man and the
fruit merchant without the necessity of
sending a messenger to them; and the
| telephone was the result of their cog
| itations.
1t took a long time to get the Chinese
cooks educated TO the idea that the
telephone was a perfectly harmless in
vention. Every Chinese cook in the
west had not read that Confucius
| speaks of the use of the telephone in de-
| ceiving the guileless Chinaman Of thou
| sands of years ago, and il required a
| special meeting of the Chinese Cooks,
at which the story was read to them,
| to convince them that the god of the
| telephone would not visit his wrath
upon their heads if they dared to exor-
else him in the way suggested by the
white employers. The story told by an
intelligent Chinaman, who was pressed
into the service by the California wom-
en- when they were endeavoring to ed
ucate their cooks up to using the tele-
| phone, went on to say that the priests
of the time of a few thousand years be-
| fore Confucius had two temples, in one
| of which the confession of the China
men would be received. Then the con-
fessor would be told to 90 post haste to
| the other temple, where the second
! priest would grant him absolution.
! While the Chinaman was covering the
| space between the two temples the
! first priest was hard at work telephon-
ing the substance of the confession to
the second one, so that by the time the
! Chinaman arrived at the second temple
his story was ready to be reeled off to
him until he was compelled to grovel
before the supernatural being who pos.
sessed such powers of divination.
Since the innovation described the Pa.
citic Telephone and Telegraph COM
! pany has gone among the $4,000 Chinese
in San Francisco, many of whom are
wealthy merchants, and has induced SC
many of the Chinese to subscribe that
a telephone exchange has been estab-
! lished in Chinatown. which is the only
one in the United States. - Chicago
! Chronicle