il, a rugged, ruddy, white-haired
man, was superintending the building of a big barn in northern Vermont.
His house stood near-by, on a balcony of rolling land that overlooked
the town of Lyndon and far beyond, across evergreen forests to the
massive bulk of Burke Mountain. His farm, very nearly ten square miles
in area, lay back of the house in a great oval of field and woodland,
with several dozen cottages in the clearings. His Welsh ponies and Swiss
cattle were grazing on the May grass, and the men were busy with the
ploughs and harrows and seeders. It was almost thirty years since he
had been called in to create the business structure of telephony, and to
shape the general plan of its development. Since then he had done many
other things. The one city of Buenos Ayres had paid him more, merely
for giving it a system of trolleys and electric lights, than the United
States had paid him for putting the telephone on a business basis. He
was now rich and retired, free to enjoy his play-work of the farm and to
forget the troubles of the city and the telephone.

But, as he stood among his barn-builders, there arrived from Boston and
New York a delegation of telephone directors. Most of them belonged to
the "Old Guard" of telephony. They had fought under Vail in the pioneer
days; and now they had come to ask him to return to the telephone
business, after twenty years of absence. Vail laughed at the suggestion.

"Nonsense," he said, "I'm too old. I'm sixty-two years of age." The
directors persisted. They spoke of the approaching storm-cloud of panic
and the need of another strong hand at the wheel until the crisis was
over, but Vail still refused. They spoke of old times and old memories,
but he shook his head. "All my life," he said, "I have wanted to be a
farmer."

Then they drew a picture of the telephone situation. They showed him
that the "grand telephonic system" which he had planned was unfinished.
He was its architect, and it was undone. The telephone business was
energetic and prosperous. Under the brilliant leadership of Frederick P.
Fish, it had grown by leaps and bounds. But it was still far from being
the SYSTEM that Vail had dreamed of in his younger days; and so, when
the directors put before him his unfinished plan, he surrendered.
The instinct for completeness, which is one of the dominating
characteristics of his mind, compelled him to consent. It was the call
of the telephone.

Since that May morning, 1