The daily chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Ind. Ter. [Okla.]) 1898-1902, 1899-12-04
A PHoNoGRAPH HOSPITAL.
Business Thrives In an odd Estab-
lIshmcnt Up in the Chicago
Masonic Temple.

4a Masonic Temple.
Photographs, like croupy babies, get
sore throats, queer voices and cast-iron
coughs, and the phonograph doctor
must lend his aid before health is re-
stored. Up on the sixteenth floor Of the
Masonic temple is photograph hospi-
tai, although of course this one institu-
tlon does not Inonopolize the unique
calling. The city is filed with them,
and since the photograph slot machine
took the place Of the gambling devices
in the saloons work has been brisk and
business thriving. Between the mis-
chief done by the small boy, whose de-
light It is to put paper wads into the
slot, and the jokes played by adults on
the guileless, unoffending machine, the
photograph surgeons have their hands
full
During the summer months the doors
Of the hospital are left open. For the
sake Of the sanity of the workers and for
health some of the awful shrieks and
buzzes must be allowed to escape. Busi-
ness men who pass back and forth in
the corridor often pause to listen to
the wheezy, shrill sounds that float out
from the rooms in which squeaky-
voiced, weak-wheeled combinations of
cylinders. and cogs are nursed back to
the sweet and dignified songsters that
they were before misfortune or weak
lungs came their way. AS soon as a
disabled phonograph arrives it is wound
up and made to tell its symptoms. AL
most invariably it bursts forth forcibly
and describes its pains and aches with
whines and sighs and fearful groans
that would bring envy to small boy
with green-apple stomachache. Often
the disorder is so chronic and of such
long standing that it's hopeless and
impossible task to determine whether
the patient is jogging out the words of
"There'll BE Hot Time or ripping the
inimitable strains Of a Sousa compost
tion into smithereens.
The worst case that ever came to this
particular hospital was one which
rightly belonged to the Kelley people.
A glass of beer had been poured into
the big brass horn and had trickled un-
into all the delicate mechan-
ism, rusting the springs and cranks,
glueing the rubber tubing and creating
general havoc. The machine was taken
apart to the smallest screw and put to |
soak in half gallon Of kerosene. 1t |
was a humiliated and reformed phono-
graph that once more raised its voice /
to hum the simple strains Of 81 Don't |
Want to Play in Your Yard"
A phonograph doctor is not unlike
the one who ministers to the ills of man.
patient arrives who to all
appearances will be helpless invalid,
but little steel arm is lifted and every
thing is well-while the bill will be just
Is big as If three weeks of treatment
lad been necessary. The hardest case
o cure is when one OF the two little
springs that rest so comfortably in
heir little metal case becomes split or
broken. While the operation is not nee
ssarily painful to the patient, it puts
he attendant into cold chill to repail
hings. Once in awhile pbonograph
S brought in by frantic individual
Who declares that the records positively
annot be put onto the cylinder, that
hey're too small to fit The frenzied
Gentleman is gently informed that in
rider to have cylinder and record per-
ectly combined one end of the record
nd one end of the cylinder are made
lightly smaller, SO that the record will
lip in place and stay there, and that
he record cannot possibly be put onto
he cylinder from the wrong end. These
ases are considered great jokes by the
doctors-as are hives and
ed nose by men of the medical profess
Times-Herald.