had a million bright ideas for all the good they would have
done him. But at that golden period of our history, if an ambitious
fellow like Watson wished to put in extra hours of work, the more
slothful ones had no authority to stand over him with a club and say he
shouldn't. Therefore the young apprentice toiled on with Mr. Bell,
unmolested; and Charles Williams, the proprietor of the shop, was
perfectly willing he should. One evening, when the two were alone, Mr.
Bell remarked, 'If I could make a current of electricity vary in
intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production
of sound, I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically.' This
was his first allusion to the telephone but that the idea of such an
instrument had been for some time in his mind was evident by the fact
that he sketched in for Watson the kind of apparatus he thought
necessary for such a device and they speculated concerning its
construction. The project never went any farther, however, because Mr.
Thomas Saunders and Mr. Gardiner Hubbard, who were financing Mr. Bell's
experiments, felt the chances of this contrivance working
satisfactorily were too uncertain. Already much time and money had been
spent on the harmonic telegraph and they argued this scheme should be
completed before a new venture was tried."

"I suppose that point of view was quite justifiable," mused Ted. "But
wasn't it a pity?"

"Yes, it was," agreed Mr. Hazen. "Yet here again we realize how man
moves inch by inch, never knowing what is just around the turn of the
road. He can only go it blindly and do the best he knows at the time.
Naturally neither Mr. Hubbard nor Mr. Saunders wanted to swamp any more
money until they had received results for what they had spent already;
and those results, alas, were not forthcoming. Over and over again poor
Watson blamed himself lest some imperceptible defect in his part of the
work was responsible for Mr. Bell's lack of success. The spring of 1875
came and still no light glimmered on the horizon. The harmonic
telegraph seemed as far away from completion as ever. Patiently the men
plodded on. Then on a June day, a day that began even less auspiciously
than had other days, the heavens suddenly opened and Alexander Graham
Bell had his vision!"

"What was it?"

"Tell us about it!" cried both boys in a breath.

"It was a warm, close afternoon in the loft over the Williams's shop
and the transmitters and receivers we