The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-12-01

blessings in this world, and to my
mind the greatest of these is the tele-
phone. / know all about how conven-
lent it is, and how many steps it saves,
and how nice it is to be able to order
things up from the shops without the
trouble of making a trip downt town
after them.
And 1 also know, says Dorothy Dix,
in the New Orleans Picayune, that a
telephone in the house just about
doubles your bills. 1t is too dead easy
to get things. 1t doesn't give us time
to cool off, and consider whether we
need them before we order them in,
and with a woman, at least, If she
doesn't buy a thing when she first
thinks she wants it she is apt not to
buy it at all. AS a first aid to ex-
travagance the telephone has no earth
ly rival. 1t lands more people in the
bankrupt court every year than poker
and whisky and horse races combin-
ed.
Then 1t destroys the last remaining
Vestige of the privacy of home. There
was a time when you could lock the
front door, and draw down the blinds,
and let down your back hair, and with
good novel sit down secure that you
had barred out friends and foes, and
could enjoy q feStfHl hour or two. Alas,
no sooner, now, do you get to the ex-
citing part of your story when Geral-
dine is about to throw herself into the
arms of the fascinating Adolphus,
when "ting-a-ling" goes the tele-
phone bell. You dare not refuse to
answer it. 1t may be your mother has
been taken sick, or your husband
wants his notebook, or your broker
wants to buy or sell your stocks, but
it's sure TO be some deadly bore who
has taken that way to find out wheth-
er you are at home so she can come
and int1ict three hours of her company
upon you. Without the telephone you
could have escaped by means of a po-
lite fib, but as 1t is you are caught like
rat in trap.
Or, perhaps, you sit down to do some
work that requires every bit of the
concentration of thought Of which you
are capable. ''Ting-a- ling ling" goes
the telephone bell. Everybody you
know calls you up to ask trivial
question, or tells you something you
don't want to know and worries and
harnesses you until you feel that the
telephone is the demon in the box of
the old fairy tale.
The worst feature of the affair, how
ever, is the demoralizing effect a tele-
phone has on young girls. If I had
daughters 1 would no more have a tele-
phone In the house than / would give
baby a Calling gun to cut its teeth
on. The opportunities it gives a girl to
make fool of herself are practically
unlimited. and, sad to say not one girl
in hundred resists the temptation.
The silly conversation of an addle-
pated girl and boy is bad enough at
best, when it is carried on at close
ranges, but when it is strung out over
miles, and is audible to anybody on the
wire who happens to be listening, it
passes Stiffness and becomes d crime.
Within the past few weeks it has been
my awful fate to listen daily to con-
versatlon that runs like this:
Hello. Central! Give memo. blank
| ey blank. (Wait of about two min
utes.) Hello! is that Jones & Smythe's?
Yes? Well, l wish to speak to Mr.. De
Shocks. (Another wait of four of five
minutes.) Hello! Is that you Pet? Yes
this is your darling little Polly Wog
What are you doing? / thought I'd just
call you UP and see If you got home
safe last night. Say, Name Brown is
just dead gone on you. Honest. now.
Says you make her think of James
Hackett-you have got such intense
eyes Say, sweetheart do you have to
stay in that hOrrid old office all day?
I don't believe you love me, or you
would get off. Say. Jem Graham was
here this morning. He says he believes
l am an awful fiirt. He's awful swell,
isn't he? Used to play on the Harvard
football team, and he knows a lot OF
actors, and has got a picture of her
self that Julia ManWeo gave him. Say
darling. you don't love anybody but
your little Ducky Daddle and never
will, will you? What's that? The boss
is calling you? Well, by-by Can YOU
get this kiss over the wire. By-by, now.
I'll call you up again this afternoon
And she does, worse luck.
And that girl has got a mother. And
she is not the only girl who says things
over the telephone that makes every
sensible woman blush for her sex.
There are others, and incredible as it
seems, they have mothers who hear
them talking such drivel. and don't
stop it. Nobody expects young girl
to have discretion and Judgment, or to
realize the disgusting and ridiculous
attitude she puts herself in carrying on
such a conversation, but heaven alone
knows what the mothers are thinking
of not to muZzle their daughters every
time they go near the telephone.
AS for the young men, they are hap
less victims of the girl with the tele-
phone habit. / have personally known
of three young men whose careers were
practically ruined, and who were dis
charged from good positions, because
their work was constantly interrupted
by calls to go to the telephone box to
talk to some fool girl who had called
them up. The hard-headed business
men who were their employers cynical
ly remarked that they didn't need con-
versationalists in their business, and
discharged the young men for what
was the girls fault.
If girls could hear what young men
say about them and the cold fury a
man is in when some idiotic miss calls
him up, they would never commit the
offense but once. Every young man
knows that nothing "queers" MIN in
the estimation of his firm like having
q telephone "mash," and he has holy
horror of the girl who does It,
1t would seem that a woman and a
telephone always make a bad combina-
ton, and one that leads to trouble
anyway. One of the developments of
the system which everybody has ex-
plotted as likely to bring sweetness and
light into the barren places was the
country telephone. IL was TO connect
farmhouses and remove the isolation
Of rural life and promote sociability
and Generally make the wilderness 10
blossom as the rose with cheerfulness
and convlviality.
Since the invasion of London by the
American chorus girl, English critics,
saws the New York Sun, have grown