.

THE HOLDING OF THE BUSINESS.
For seventeen months no one disputed Bell's claim to be the original inventor of the telephone.

All the honor, such as it was, had been given to him freely, and no one came forward to say that it was not rightfully his.

No one, so far as we know, had any strong desire to do so.

No one conceived that the telephone would ever be any more than a whimsical oddity of science.