So I gave up the pleasant dream, abandoned the cosy den and came down stairs to the dining room where I can scatter my manuscript about on the big table, and look the tyrants in the face and answer the queries that arise, and can sandwich in a good many little odd jobs besides. Through a doctor's telephone how many glimpses of human nature and how many peeps into the great Story of Life have been mine; and if, while the reader is peeping too, the scene suddenly closes, why that is the way of telephones and not the fault of the writer. And knowing how restful a thing it has been to me to get away from the ringing of the bell at times, I have devised a rest for the reader also and have sent him with the doctor and his wife on an occasional country drive where no telephone intrudes. E. M. F. Robinson, Ill. The Story of a Doctor's Telephone CHAPTER I. The hands of the clock were climbing around toward eleven and the doctor had not returned. Mary, a drowsiness beginning to steal over her, looked up with a yawn. Then she fell into a soliloquy: To bed, or not to bed--that is the question: Whether 'tis wiser in the wife to wait for a belated spouse, Or to wrap the drapery of her couch about her And lie down to pleasant dreams? To dream! perchance to sleep! And by that sleep to end the headache And the thousand other ills that flesh is heir to, The restoration of a wilted frame,-- Wilted by loss of sleep on previous nights-- A consummation devoutly to be wished. To dream! perchance to sleep!--aye, there's the rub; For in that somnolence what peals may come Must give her pause. There is the telephone That makes calamity of her repose. Her spouse may not have come to answer it, Which means that she, his wife, must issue forth All dazed and breathless from delicious sleep, And knock her knees on intervening chairs, And bump her head on a half open door, And get there finally all out of breath, And take the receiver down and say: "Hello?" The old, old question: "Is the doctor there?" Comes clearly now to her awakened ear. Then, tentatively, she must make reply: "The doctor was called out an hour ago, But I expect him now at any time." Good patrons should be held and not escape To other doctors that may lie in wait; For in this voice so brusque and straight and clear She recognizes an old friend and true, Whose purse is ever ready to make good, And she hath need of many, many things. But then, again, the message of the 'phone May be that of some stricken little child Whose mother's voice trembles with love and fear. Then must the listener earnestly advise: "Don't wait for him! Get someone else to-night." Perchance again the message may be that Of colics dire and death so imminent That she who listens, tho' with 'customed ear, Shrinks back dismayed and knows not what to say,