These young men had not only to battle against mystery and "the powers of the air"; they had not only to protect their tiny electric messenger, and to create a system of wire highways along which he could run up and down safely; they had to do more.

They had to make this system so simple and fool-proof that every one--every one except the deaf and dumb--could use it without any previous experience.
They had to educate Bell's Genie of the Wire so that he would not only obey his masters, but anybody--anybody who could speak to him in any language.
No doubt, if the young men had stopped to consider their life-work as a whole, some of them might have turned back.

But they had no time to philosophize.

They were like the boy who learns how to swim by being pushed into deep water.

Once the telephone business was started, it had to be kept going; and as it grew, there came one after another a series of congestions.