It was too freakish, too bizarre, to be used outside of the laboratory and the museum.

No one, literally, could understand how it worked; and the only man who offered a clear solution of the mystery was a Boston mechanic, who maintained that there was "a hole through the middle of the wire." People who talked for the first time into a telephone box had a sort of stage fright.

They felt foolish.

To do so seemed an absurd performance, especially when they had to shout at the top of their voices.

Plainly, whatever of convenience there might be in this new contrivance was far outweighed by the loss of personal dignity; and very few men had sufficient imagination to picture the telephone as a part of the machinery of their daily work.