That curious instrument, — the telephone,—which conveys sounds to a
distance, so that even the tone of a familiar voice can be recognised, and a tune heard, many many miles away, was tried with great success between Boston (Massachusetts) and Salem, a place eighteen miles from Boston, on the evening of Tues- day, February 13th. The tunes "Should auld acquaintance be forgot" and "Yankee Doodle," played in Boston, were readily recognised in Salem; and questions asked in Salem, such as "Does it rain ?" were answered immediately and audibly from Boston. The same instrument has, we believe, been tried with the same euecess from a much greater distance, a distance of hundreds of miles, instead of a score. The invention is very curious and interesting, but writing as we do in complete ignorance as yet of the structure of the telephone, we must be allowed to express a hope that it is not an instrument which can easily be set at work without the consent of the victim. If we were liable, without our own concurrence, to be suddenly made , a party to one or more of the silly conversations, or an auditor of one or more of the maddening tunes, which are always going %An what Carlyle _calls "this washed-out nineteenth century of ours," we should soon be ready for a lunatic asylum. Fancyauddeply having your ears opened to all the 'silly babbleof khk_pand,4,1e-theaded and very _chattering world I
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