There is no man who will go further to accommodate a friend than we will, but by the great ethereal there are some things we will not do to please anybody.  As we sat and meditated, the bell rang once more, and then we knew the wires had got tangled, and that we were going to have trouble all day.  It was a busy day, too, and to have a bell ringing beside one’s ear all day is no fun.

The telephone is a blessed thing when it is healthy, but when its liver is out of order it is the worst nuisance on record.  When it is out of order that way you can hear lots of conversation that you are not entitled to.  For instance, we answered the bell after it had rung several times, and a sweet little female voice said, “Are you going to receive to-morrow?” We answered that we were going to receive all the time.  Then she asked what made us so hoarse?  We told her that we had sat in a draft from the bank, and it made the cold chills run over us to pay it.  That seemed to be satisfactory, and then she began to tell us what she was going to wear, and asked if we thought it was going to be too cold to wear a low neck dress and elbow sleeves.  We told her that was what we were going to wear, and then she began to complain that her new dress was too tight in various places that she mentioned, and when the boys picked us up off the floor and bathed our temples, and we told them to take her away, they thought we were crazy.

[Illustration:  AT THE TELEPHONE.]

If we have done wrong in talking with a total strangers who took us for a lady friend, we are willing to die.  We couldn’t help it.  For an hour we would not answer the constant ringing of the bell, but finally the bell fluttered as though a tiny bird had lit upon the wire and was shaking its plumage.  It was not a ring, but it was a tune, as though an angel, about eighteen years old, a blonde angel, was handling the other end of the transmitter, and we felt as though it was wrong for us to sit and keep her in suspense, when she was evidently dying to pour into our auricular appendage remarks that we ought to hear.

And still the bell did flut.  We went to the cornucopia, put our ear to the toddy stick and said, “What ailest thou darling, why dost thy hand tremble?  Whisper all thou feelest to thine old baldy.”  Then there came over the wire and into our mansard by a side window the following touching remarks:  “Matter enough.  I have been ringing here till I have blistered my hands.  We have got to have ten car loads of hogs by day after to-morrow or shut down.”  Then there was a stuttering, and then another voice said, “Go over to Loomis’ pawn shop.  A man shot in”—­and another voice broke in singing, “The sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful”—­and another voice said—­“girl I ever saw.  She was riding with a duffer, and wiped her nose as I drove by in the street car, and I think she is struck after me.”

It was evident that the telephone was drunk, and we went out in the hall and wrote on a barrel all the afternoon, and gave it full possession of the office.