engaged in a game of fox and geese." In the same year E. J. Hall wrote a cat-and-dog squabble between the boys and the public, with every one or taking out pegs from a central framework as if they were lunatics Bedlam." By the clumsy methods of those days, from two to six boys were exchange was a loud and frantic place. highly important: "Don't Talk with your Ear or Listen with your Mouth." troubles of the business. Nothing could be done with them. They were Even as late as 1880, when New York boasted fifteen hundred telephones, Boys, as operators, proved to be most complete and consistent failures. the boys in the first exchanges did their full share in adding to the immune to all schemes of discipline. Like the MYSTERIOUS NOISES they of noise could convey the proper impression. An editor who visited the a printed page is a wholly impossible thing. Nothing but a language names were still in use. And as the first telephones were used both as needed to handle each call. And as there was usually more or less of Boys are rushing madly hither and thither, while others are putting in transmitters and receivers, there was usually posted up a rule that was could not be controlled, and by general consent they were abolished. from Buffalo that his exchange with twelve boys had become "a perfect Their sins of omission and commission would fill a book. What with Chicago exchange in 1879 said of it: "The racket is almost deafening. whittling the switchboards, swearing at subscribers, playing tricks with In place of the noisy and obstreperous boy came the docile, soft-voiced yelling at the top of his voice, it may be imagined that a telephone girl. the wires, and roaring on all occasions like young bulls of Bashan, To describe one of those early telephone exchanges in the silence of