You'll have to talk pretty loud.") Hello, Taledo. All ready--Nmbr." That is a fair sample of Carrie. We couldn't keep house without her. And that's why I feel an awful pang of jealousy when I hear that lobster Sam talking to her. Maybe it's just the ordinary joshing which goes on over the toll lines in the off hours. But maybe it isn't. Wherever Sam is and whoever he is, he is a danger to Homeburg. Perhaps he is a lineman at Paynesville, and then again he may be a grocer in some crossroads town near by, with a toll telephone in the back of his store. But if he talks to Carrie long enough and skilfully enough, he will come up to Homeburg, marry her, and bear her away to his lair, far from our bereaved ears. We've lost several telephone girls that way, and when a telephone girl knows all of your habits and customs and those of your friends, and can tell just where to find you or to find whomever you want found, and has the business of the town down to the smallest details stowed away in her capable head, it messes things up dreadfully to have her leave us high and dry and go to housekeeping--which any one can do. Telephone girls are born, not made, in towns like Homeburg. We require so much more of them than city folks do. When my wife wants to know if hats are being worn at an afternoon reception, she calls up Carrie. Ten to one Carrie has caught a scrap of conversation over the line and knows. But if she hasn't, she will call up and find out. When a doctor leaves his office to make a call, he calls up Carrie, and she faithfully pursues him through town and country all day, if necessary. When we are preparing for a journey, we do not go down to the depot until we have called up Carrie and have found out if the train is on time, and if it isn't, we ask her to call us when it is discovered by the telegraph operator. And when our babies wander away, we no longer run frantically up and down the street hunting for them. We ask Carrie to advertise for a lost child seven hands high, and wearing a four-hour-old face-wash; and within five minutes she has called up fifteen people in various parts of the town and has discovered that said child is playing Indian in some back yard a few blocks away.