vor after each failure. She kept his records and notes and wrote
his letters. Through her Bell secured the support of her father,
Gardiner G. Hubbard, who was widely known as one of Boston's ablest
lawyers. He was destined to become Bell's chief spokesman and
defender.

Hubbard first became aware of Bell's inventive genius when the latter
was calling one evening at the Hubbard home in Cambridge. Bell was
illustrating some mysteries of acoustics with the aid of the piano.
"Do you know," he remarked, "that if I sing the note G close to the
strings of the piano, the G string will answer me?"

This did not impress the lawyer, who asked its significance.

"It is a fact of tremendous importance," answered Bell. "It is
evidence that we may some day have a musical telegraph which will
enable us to send as many messages simultaneously over one wire as
there are notes on that piano."

From that time forward Hubbard took every occasion to encourage Bell
to carry forward his experiments in musical telegraphy.

As a young man Bell was tall and slender, with jet-black eyes and
hair, the latter being pushed back into a curly tangle. He was
sensitive and high-strung, very much the artist and the man of
science. His enthusiasms were intense, and, once his mind was filled
with an idea, he followed it devotedly. He was very little the
practical business man and paid scant attention to the small,
practical details of life. He was so interested in visible speech, and
so keenly alert to the pathos of the lives of the deaf mutes, that he
many times seriously considered giving over all experiments with the
musical telegraph and devoting his entire life and energies to the
amelioration of their condition.

XII

THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE

The Cellar at Sanderses'--Experimental Beginnings--Magic Revived in
Salem Town--The Dead Man's Ear--The Right Path--Trouble and
Discouragement--The Trip to Washington--Professor Joseph Henry--The
Boston Workshop--The First Faint Twang of the Telephone--Early
Development.

Alexander Graham Bell had not resided at the Sanderses' home very long
before he had fitted the basement up as a workshop. For three years he
haunted it, spending all of his leisure time in his experiments. Here
he had his apparatus, and the basement was littered with a curious
combination of electrical and acoustical devices--magnets, batteries,
coils of wire, tuning-forks, speaking-trumpets, etc. Bell