I’ve supported myself since I was sixteen, my father dying then, and my mother—God rest her blessed memory!—two years later. First I was in a department store and then in the Telephone Company. I haven’t a relation in the country and if I had I wouldn’t have asked a nickel off them. I’m that kind, independent and—but that’s enough about me. Now for you to rightly get what I’m going to tell I’ll have to begin with a description of Longwood village and the country round about. I’ve made a sort of diagram—it isn’t drawn to scale but it gives the general effect, all right—and with that and what I’ll describe you can get an idea of the lay of the land, which you have to have to understand things. Longwood’s in New Jersey, a real picturesque village of a thousand inhabitants. It’s a little over an hour from New York by the main line and here and there round it are country places, mostly fine ones owned by rich people. There are some farms too, and along the railway and the turnpike are other villages. My exchange is the central office for a good radius of country, taking in Azalea, twenty-five miles above us on the main line, and running its wires out in a big circle to the scattered houses and the crossroad settlements. It’s on Main Street, opposite the station, and from my chair at the switchboard I can see the platform and the trains as they come down from Cherry Junction or up from New York. It’s sixty miles from Longwood to the Junction where you get the branch line that goes off to the North, stopping at other stations, mostly for the farm people, and where, when you get to Hazelmere, you can connect with an express for Philadelphia. Also you can keep right on from the Junction and get to Philadelphia that way, which is easier, having no changes and better trains. When I was first transferred from New York—it’s over two years now—I thought I’d die of the lonesomeness of it. At night, looking out of my window—I lived over Galway’s Elite Millinery Parlors on Lincoln Street—across those miles and miles of country with a few lights dotted here and there, I felt like I was cast on a desert island. After a while I got used to it and that first spring when the woods began to get a faint greenish look and I’d wake up and hear birds twittering in the elms along the street—hold on! I’m getting sidetracked. It’s going to be hard at first to keep myself out, but just be patient, I’ll do it better as I go along.