* * * * *
DEAD SEA FRUIT.
To-day the telephone has been installed. The members of our staff are going
about their duties in a dazed fashion, and I, to whose single-handed
tenacity the achievement is due, find myself unable in these first full
moments of triumph to concentrate on my every-day affairs.
I can still remember that fresh summer morning when with springy step I set
out to call upon the District Contract Agent for the first time. Innocently
enough I expected to arrange for the installation of a telephone within the
next two or three days. But I recollect that as I ascended the steps of his
premises I became depressed by that House of Usher foreboding, and then,
when I witnessed the way in which an imperturbable official discomfited a
tempestuous gentleman who was giving tongue to a long list of his wrongs,
my carefully rehearsed and resolute address shrivelled on my lips and I
found myself asking tamely for a form.
This form, _plus_ the information that telephones were more speedily
installed where ex-Service men were employed, was the net result of my
first encounter.
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