The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-03-29
Dorothy Dix Tails
The Girl and the Phone-1.
NJ DOROTHY DIX
worlds highest raid Woman Writes.


81 have just been reading in the
paper" said a young man the other
day, about a Chicago youth who has
had to get the court to issue an order
restraining a Jane from telephoning
him. 1t seems that the lady called
him up on an average of two hundred
times a day so that he had no time
for anything else but answering the
phone, and he had to invoke the law
TO protect him.
"In say that chap has my earnest
heartfelt sympathy, and there are
about five million young men in this
country that would like to fall on his
neck, and kiss him on both cheeks,
and pin a CroiN de Guerre on his
breast and abase themselves before his
heroism. For he has had the courage
to do what the balance of US lack the
nerve to do, and that is to protect our
selves against the girls who hound
men over the telephone.
do you know why the telephone
companies have a cast iron rule
against swearing and cursing over the
wire? 1t is to prevent men from say
ing aloud what they are thinking
when a woman calls them up. A man
may purr over the wire as silkily as
an Angora cat that is having its fur
rubbed the right way, but he puts the
extra oil in his voice to camouflage
his real feelings. Inside of him he is
just one big. big damn. A man never
wants woman to take the initiative
in telephoning anyway. That is his
privilege. He has the telephone con-
tinually on his desk, right at his hand
and any women may be very certain
that he will phone her il he wants to
hear her voice.
with women gossiping with each
other over the phone 1 have no con-
Germ. That is their own affair, and
the matter is between their own
consciences and the telephone COM
pany, but it does look as if even
girl who is congenial idiot would
have intelligence enough not to teIe-
phone man in business hours. but
they don't.
"A girl, with nothing on earth on
her mind but her hair, will call
man up to have a long heart-to-heart
talk about what a perfectly lovely
time they had last night, and what
Sally said to Mamie. and Mamie said
to John, and she will coo, and gurgle
and flirt, and spend ten. minutes try
ing to make him guess who She Is
while the poor devil stands on one
foot, and then on the other. and tries
TO remember that he is a gentleman.
and hopes to heaven his boss isn't in
the offing.
THE girl and the telephone nui-
sance has gotten to be so acute that
in many business offices employees
are not allowed to receive telephone
calls except at the noon hour, but
even in these places where employees
as machines, there isn't man who
doesn't have nervous shivers and get
cold feet every time he hears the tele-
phone bell ring.
He doesn't like to abuse the lib
erty he is granted by spending ten
or fifteen minutes listening to some
fool girl gum up the wire with inani-
ties. He doesn't want to have his
mind distracted from his work. Pos
sibly he was on the verge of selling
a bill of goods, and had the customer
worked up to the buying point In
another minute the deal would have
gone over. hut by the time he has
gotten back from the telephone the
customer has cooled down and the
deal is off. Or, after long coneentra-
ton. he may have just about arrived
at the solution of some problem which
the ringing of the telephone scattered
to the four winds, and it doesn't need
any soothsayer to tell him that his
employer is not looking for young
men, who spend half their time phi
at the telephone, to put in
i'm portant Places