which, with the aid of the electric current, could
transmit its music over a wire and reproduce it.

While lecturing in Boston on his system of teaching visible speech,
the elder Bell received a request to locate in that city and take up
his work in its schools. He declined the offer, but recommended his
son as one entirely competent for the position. Alexander Graham
Bell received the offer, which he accepted, and he was soon at work
teaching the deaf mutes in the school which Boston had opened for
those thus afflicted. He met with the greatest success in his work,
and ere long achieved a national reputation. During the first year of
his work, 1871, he was the sensation of the educational world. Boston
University offered him a professorship, in which position he taught
others his system of teaching, with increased success.

The demand for his services led him to open a School of Vocal
Physiology. He had made some improvements in his father's system for
teaching the deaf and dumb to speak and to understand spoken words,
and displayed great ability as a teacher. His experiments with
telegraphy and telephony had been laid aside, and there seemed little
chance that he would turn from the work in which he was accomplishing
so much for so many sufferers, and which was bringing a comfortable
financial return, and again undertake the tedious work in search for a
telephone.

Fortunately, Bell was to establish close relationships with those who
understood and appreciated his abilities and gave him encouragement
in his search for a new means of communication. Thomas Sanders, a
resident of Salem, had a five-year-old son named Georgie who was a
deaf mute. Mr. Sanders sought Bell's tutelage for his son, and it was
agreed that Bell should give Georgie private lessons for the sum of
three hundred and fifty dollars a year. It was also arranged that Bell
was to reside at the Sanders home in Salem. He made arrangements to
conduct his future experiments there.

Another pupil who came to him about this time was Mabel Hubbard, a
fifteen-year-old girl who had lost her hearing and consequently her
powers of speech, through an attack of scarlet fever when an infant.
She was a gentle and lovable girl, and Bell fell completely in love
with his pupil. Four years later he was to marry her and she was
to prove a large influence in helping him to success. She took the
liveliest interest in all of his experiments and encouraged him to new
endea