re was no arguing with the
trumpets of martial duty. The soldier's trumpet heeds not the soldier's
tears. The war was far away and likely to be long. Months, even years,
might go by before that Danish lord would look on the face of his bride
again. So much might happen meanwhile! A little boy, or a little girl,
might be born to the castle, and the father, fighting far away, know
nothing of the beautiful news. And there was no telephone in the castle,
and it was five hundred years to the nearest telegraph office.

So the husband and wife agreed upon a facetious signal of their own. The
castle stood upon a ridge of hills which could be seen fifty miles away,
and on the ridge the bride promised to build a church. If the child that
was to be born proved to be a boy, the church would be builded with a
tower; if a girl, with a steeple. So the husband went his way, and three
years passed, and at length he returned with his pennons and his
men-at-arms to his own country. Scanning the horizon line, he hurried
impatiently toward the heliographic ridge. And lo! when at last it came
in sight against the rising sun, there was a new church builded stately
there--with two towers.

So it was with the most important of all news in the Middle Ages; and
yet today, as I said, you in New York City have only to knock good-night
on your wall, to be heard by your true love in Omaha, and hear her knock
back three times the length of France; Pyramus and Thisbe--with this
difference: that the wall is no longer a barrier, but a sensitive
messenger. It has become, indeed, in the words of Demetrius in _A
Midsummer Night's Dream_, the wittiest of partitions, and the modern
Pyramus may apostrophize it in grateful earnest:

"Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall ...
Thanks, courteous wall. Jove shield thee well for this!"

So at least I always feel toward the wall of my apartment every time I
call up her whom my soul loveth that dwelleth far away in Massachusetts.
She being a Capulet and I a Montague, it would go hard with us for
communication, were it not for this long-distance wall; and any one
who knows anything of love knows that the primal need of lovers is
communication. Lovers have so deep a distrust of each other's love that
they need to be assured of it from hour to hour. To the philosopher it
may well seem strange that this certitude should thus be in need of
progressive corroboration. But so it is, and the pampere