The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-08-05

~~~-~~-1~~-
 Boston. August 4, 19os.-of all the queer places for telephone-and they
 are altogether too many to state-prob- ably the queerest was the interior of the dragon used in a performance Of "Siegfried" in New York. The Wag- ner opera calls for an animal that will
 spit fire and snort In 8-4 time, but the
 best the stage managers have been able to do as a rule Is to prevent the living beings impersonating the dreadful beast from prancing into the midst of the orchestra or backing into the blonde heroine and causing her to stop her noise.
 The night in question the opera was | put on without rehearsal. and fearing
 the monster might do something worthy
 of his reputation the stage manager hit upon the Idea of telephoning the | two boys inside how to act. A line
 was carried from the Bell switchboard
 in the Metropolitan Opera House to the dragon. Receivers such as the girls | at "centraf' wear were attached to l the occupants of the horny enement l and-the stage manager did the rest.
 As a result, the dragon behaved so creditably that some the captious critics suggested a similar method of operating singers accustomed to act like wooden Indians.
 It far cry from CIV York to Seattle, but speaking of queer places containing the ubiquitous instrument | which Dr. Bell invented, the station found by tourists in the wickiup or
 wigwam of Running Ned, and old Si- wash Indian, who lives in a village just outside the northwestern metropolis, Is l close second to the Wagnerian
 dragon. It is a case of extremes meet | ing The Indian is one of the few
 survivors of a powerful tribe that once | fshed and hunted along the shores or
 Puget Sound. and his wigwam is | nothing more than contraption made
 of bark, gunny-sa and cast-on pieces of sail. surmounted by lot
 of hattened old tin cans that pass for | roof, but in spite of the primitive
 nature of the premises there is tele- phone inside. The tourist Is on the point of turning away with the l thought that the redskin is surely back number when, presto! the scene
 Is entirely changed by the familiar
 ring of the telephone belE and a bare 1 footed squaw drops her papoose or rakish buck puts down his long pipe and enters the wigwam to converse with one of Running Ned's Salesmen in town. For the old warrior Is dealer In wickerware, and when It comes to quoting prices. and taking advantage of the ups and downs of the market. he is as keen to appreciate the value of the telephone as any 1 frenzied fnancier in Wall street. But, after all. this is nothing Tn comparison with the common use or the telephone on the Indian reserva- tions to the south. More than SOo Sioux braves in South Dakota alone are officially recorded as subscribing to the Bell service at the several agencies A good many of the abor- 4. ero Of fhAlT ancestors when conversing through
 "central." which illustrates the say ing that the telephone is the champion polyglot.
 The other day was completed the in' stallation of the telephone system two thirds of a mile underground ID | the Wolverine mine. near Calumet Michigan. so that nowadays 1t Is pos sible for the president of the company owning the mine to converse directly l from his New York office with the superintendent of the gangs digging copper out of the bowels of the eartp
 more than a thousand miles away In many cities telephones are round | in public schools. and the latest use | of the public school telephone is to alo | in the instruction of children whose hearing Is poor. This is project in which by the way, Professor Alex ander Graham Bell has been interested since his youth It first proved sue
 cessful in an institution for the dear
 at Rochester. New York, and now tne | Board of Education of Cleveland' Ohlo'
 Is giving 1t a trial.
 The telephone in the painless woods.
 which keeps the lumber camp qtnclals
 in touch with the more or less distant
 markets, and which incidentally IS the
 means of saving life and property by | transmitting messages in time to pre- vent the big jams that formerly were | the bane of the lumber mans life. ana l the telephone on the lumber raIt gong | to market on the tortuous streams or the Middle West. these have now been ! increased by the telephone in another ] wilderness--in the arid lands which f the government is retaining In the { west. The first thing the united
 States Reclamation Service did when
 it recently took up the irrigation work
 in Strawberry Valley, Utah, was 10 put