She is trained to save half-seconds.

And it is at such moments, if ever, that the users of a telephone can appreciate its insurance value.

No doubt, if a King Richard III were worsted on a modern battlefield, his instinctive cry would be, "My Kingdom for a telephone!" When instant action is needed in the city of New York, a General Alarm can in five minutes be sent by the police wires over its whole vast area of three hundred square miles.

When, recently, a gas main broke in Brooklyn, sixty girls were at once called to the centrals in that part of the city to warn the ten thousand families who had been placed in danger.

When the ill-fated General Slocum caught fire, a mechanic in a factory on the water-front saw the blaze, and had the presence of mind to telephone the newspapers, the hospitals, and the police.