Several powerful capitalists undertook to pay the expenses of this adventure.

Wires were strung; stock was sold; and the enterprise looked for a time so genuine that when the Bell lawyers asked for an injunction against it, they were refused.

This was as hard a blow as the Bell people received in their eleven years of litigation; and the Bell stock tumbled thirty-five points in a few days.

Infringing companies sprang up like gourds in the night.

And all went merrily with the promoters until the Overland Company was thrown out of court, as having no evidence, except "the refuse and dregs of former cases--the heel-taps found in the glasses at the end of the frolic." But even after this defeat for the claimants, the frolic was not wholly ended.