Nature knows no strain. True science knows no strain. Therefore _a strained high-pitched voice does not carry over the telephone wire as well as a low one._ If every woman using the telephone would remember this fact the good accomplished would be thricefold. She would save her own nervous energy. She would save the ears of the woman at the other end of the wire. She would make herself heard. Patience, gentleness, firmness--a quiet concentration--all tell immeasurably over the telephone wire. Impatience, rudeness, indecision, and diffuseness blur communication by telephone even more than they do when one is face to face with the person talking. It is as if the wire itself resented these inhuman phases of humanity and spit back at the person who insulted it by trying to transmit over it such unintelligent bosh. There are people who feel that if they do not get an immediate answer at the telephone they have a right to demand and get good service by means of an angry telephonic sputter. The result of this attempt to scold the telephone girl is often an impulsive, angry response on her part--which she may be sorry for later on--and if the service is more prompt for that time it reacts later to what appears to be the same deficiency. No one was ever kept steadily up to time by angry scolding. It is against reason. To a demanding woman who is strained and tired herself, a wait of ten seconds seems ten minutes. I have heard such a woman ring the telephone bell almost without ceasing for fifteen minutes. I could hear her strain and anger reflected in the ringing of the bell. When finally she "got her party" the strain in her high-pitched voice made it impossible for her to be clearly understood. Then she got angry again because "Central" had not "given her a better connection," and finally came away from the telephone nearly in a state of nervous collapse and insisted that the telephone would finally end her life. I do not think she once suspected that the whole state of fatigue which had almost brought an illness upon her was absolutely and entirely her own fault. The telephone has no more to do with it than the floor has to do with a child's falling and bumping his head. The worst of this story is that if any one had told this woman that her tired state was all unnecessary, it would have roused more strain and anger, more fatigue, and more consequent illness. Women must begin to find out their own deficiencies before they are ready to accept suggestions which can lead to greater freedom and more common sense. Another place where science and inhuman humanity do not blend is in the angry moving up and down of the telephone hook. When the hook is moved quickly and without pause it does not give time for the light before the telephone girl to flash, therefore she cannot be reminded that any one is waiting at the other end.