Ah, the sweetness of appreciation! That New York audience was applauding vigorously. When it stopped, the same voice came with a new note of triumph in it. “Mr. Watson, the audience heard that perfectly and call for an encore.” I sang through my entire repertoire and began again on “Hold the Fort,” before that audience was satisfied. That experience did me good, I have never had stage fright since. But the “supposititious Mr. Watson,” as they called me then, had to do the singing at all of Bell’s subsequent lectures. Nobody else had a chance at the job; one experience was enough for Mr. Bell. My baritone had his hat on his head and a cynical expression on his face, when I finished working on those songs. “Is that what you wanted?” he asked. “Yes.” “Well, boss, I couldn’t do that.” Of course he couldn’t. An Exhibition in Lawrence Another occasion is burnt into my memory that wasn’t such a triumph over difficulties. In these lectures we always had another trouble to contend with, besides the rusty joints in the wires; that was the operators cutting in, during the lectures, their highest resistance relays, which enabled them to hear some of the intermittent current effects I sent to the hall. Inductance, retardation, and all that sort of thing which you have so largely conquered since were invented long before the telephone was, and were awaiting her on earth all ready to slam it when Bell came along. Bell lectured at Lawrence, Massachusetts, one evening in May, and I prepared to furnish him with the usual program from the laboratory in Boston. [Illustration: _Watson’s “Buzzer”_] But the wire the company assigned us was the worst yet. It worked fairly well when we tried it in the afternoon, but in the evening every station on the line had evidently cut in its relay, and do my best I couldn’t get a sound through to the hall. The local newspaper generally sent a reporter to my end of the wire to write up the occurrences there. This is the report of such an envoy as it appeared in the Lawrence paper the morning after Bell’s lecture there: “Mr. Fisher returned this morning. He says that Watson, the organist and himself occupied the laboratory, sitting in their shirt sleeves with their collars off. Watson shouted his lungs into the telephone mouthpiece, ‘Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!’ and receiving no response, inquired of Fisher if he pardoned for a little ‘hamburg edging’ on his language. Mr. Fisher endeavored to transmit to his Lawrence townsman the tune of ‘Federal Street’ played upon the cornet, but the air was not distinguishable here. About 10 P.M., Watson discovered the ‘Northern Lights’ and found his wires alive with lightning, which was not included in the original scheme of the telephone. He says the loose electricity abroad in the world was too much for him.” Waiting for Watson