' He is
like the man who always backs the wrong horse, the poet with an 'Ode
to Spring,' or the honest man seeking a political job, continually
defeated, but ever dreaming of ultimate success.
"I know of only one instance in which the dream was realized. A
new girl had been installed in a telephone office without proper
instructions--a most unprecedented case. A bookkeeper, grown gray
in the service of a large mercantile house, picked up his receiver
wearily. It rang the new girl's bell, and like a flash, she said,
'Hello.' The bookkeeper gasped. 'Is that you, Central?' he asked
huskily. 'Yes,' replied the unsophisticated maiden, pleasantly. 'What
number, please?' The old man sat bolt upright and clutched the desk.
'Give me purple six double-nine,' he said, in quavering tones, and
his weak form trembled as he spoke. Nimbly worked the fingers of the
uninitiated telephone girl, as she struck a peg in the switchboard and
quickly rang a bell. A voice at the other end responded promptly, and
the bookkeeper wiped cold beads of perspiration from his brow before
he answered.
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