But my vacation was about over. Besides raising the wind, the lectures had stirred up a great demand for telephone lines. The public was ready for the telephone long before we were ready for the public, and this pleasant artistic interlude had to stop; I was needed in the shop to build some telephones to satisfy the insistent demand. Fred Gower, a young newspaper man of Providence, had become interested with Mr. Bell in the lecture work. He had an unique scheme for a dual lecture with my illustrations sent from a central point to halls in two cities at the same time. I think my last appearance in public was one of these dualities. Bell lectured at New Haven and Gower gave the talk at Hartford, while I was in between at Middletown, Conn., with my apparatus, including my songs. It didn’t work very well. The two lecturers didn’t speak synchronously. Gower told me afterwards that I was giving him, “How do you do,” when he wanted “Hold the Fort,” and Bell said I made it awkward for him by singing “Do Not Trust Him, Gentle Lady,” when he needed the trombone solo. The “Gower-Bell” Telephone In the following August, Professor Bell married and went to England, taking with him a complete set of up-to-date telephones, with which he intended to start the trouble in that country. Fred Gower became so fascinated with lecturing on the telephone that he gave up an exclusive right Mr. Hubbard had granted him for renting telephones all over New England, for the exclusive privilege of using the telephone for lecture purposes all over the United States. But it wasn’t remunerative after Bell and I gave it up. The discriminating public preferred Mr. Bell as speaker—and I always felt that the singing never reached the early heights. [Illustration: _Magneto Wall Set (Williams’ Coffin)_] Gower went to England later. There he made some small modification of Bell’s telephone, called it the “Gower-Bell” telephone, and made a fortune out of his hyphenated atrocity. Later he married Lillian Nordica, although she soon separated from him. He became interested in ballooning. The last scene in his life before the curtain dropped showed a balloon over the waters of the English Channel. A fishing boat hails him, “Where are you bound?” Gower’s voice replies, “To London.” Then the balloon and its pilot drifted into the mist forever. Developing a Calling Apparatus; the Watson “Buzzer” [Illustration: _Francis Blake_]