Telegram

“ There are still some dear old ladies who, on receipt of a telegram, make a rapid mental survey of the entire roster of their near and distant relatives and wonder whose death or illness the message may announce before they open the fateful envelope, only to find that up-to-date Cousin Mary, who has learned that the telegraph is as readily used as the mail and many times more rapid and efficient, wants to know whether they can come out for the week-end. ”

“ Besides letters and postcards, telegrams furnish another means of communication. For a telegram sent to any place in the United Kingdom, the charge is sixpence for the first twelve words, and a halfpenny for every word after the first twelve. Addresses are charged for, so a sixpennyworth of telegraphing does not represent a long message, but by ingenuity—and a business woman is nothing without ingenuity—a few words may be made to mean a great deal. The cost of a reply to a telegram may be prepaid. ”

“ Suddenly his youngest son, darting into the room, said breathlessly, "Father! come home quickly; there is a telegram." At the word "telegram" the occupants of the reception room were alarmed. The arrival of a telegram is not a daily event in villages, and as a rule telegrams bring ill news—news of misfortune. ”

“ In simple communities, such as Scalawag Harbor, a telegram is a shocking incident. Bad news must be sped; good news may await a convenient time. A telegram signifies the very desperation of haste and need—it conveys news only of the most momentous import; and upon every man into whose hands it falls it lays a grave obligation to expedite its delivery. Tommy Lark had never before touched a telegram ”

“ Edwin Clayhanger." In those days the wives of even prominent business men did not customarily receive such a rain of telegrams that the delivery of a telegram would pass unmentioned and be forgotten. On the contrary, the delivery of a telegram was an event in a woman's life. The telegram which he had detected might have been innocently negligible, in forty different ways. It might, for example, have been from Janet, or about a rehearsal of the Choral Society, or from a tradesman at Oldcastle, or about rooms at the seaside. ”

“ When I discovered that the seedy lounger about our office had carefully taken down the cipher telegram addressed to Burkhill, I was indignant, for it was well known that one of the most important duties which the telegraph companies insist upon is the inviolability of the messages intrusted to their wires. Nothing less 58 than a peremptory order from the court is sufficient to produce the telegrams placed in our care. ”

“ It has been discovered that the telegram, on account of its peculiar attention-compelling quality, is an effective medium not only for the individual appeal, but for placing business propositions before a number of people at once, the night letters and day letters being particularly adapted to this purpose by reason of the greater scope of expression which they offer. ”

“ If there be a clear space at the bottom of the cup devoid of tea-leaves, it shows water, and that, in all probability, the letter is coming from abroad. If the symbol of the letter comes very near to a bird flying, it shows a telegram. If the bird is flying towards the consultant (the handle) , the telegram has been received. The news in it is to be judged by other signs in the cup. If flying away from the handle, the telegram is sent by the consultant. A single bird flying always indicates speedy news. ”

“ It makes me tired the way they persist in telephoning telegrams. We do get the worst service! I had no idea you were coming. Why, I sent off a perfect bunch of mail to you this very morning. You weren't peeved, were you, Toots, about my telegram, I mean? ”

“ To receive a telegram in camp generally means bad news. We instantly think of an imperative order to return at once to civilization, or worse, the serious illness of those nearest to us—even death. The telegram addressed to Joe was brought into Keene Valley by the mail stage at noon, and handed to the postmaster in the small country store, who, having got hold of Bill Dubois’s boy, sent him off with it to the upper pond. ”

“ There was a messenger boy with a telegram and it was addressed to me. I had never before received telegrams at the house and I was surprised. On opening it I read a message reminding me that I had been convicted at Newcastle eight years before and telling me that the police were calling at three o’clock. ”

“ I had been gone a fortnight when the telegram was put into my hands. I had got a letter from my sister, a few hours before, saying that all was well at home. The telegram said in five words that she had died suddenly the previous night. There was no mention of my mother, and I was three days’ journey from home.
The news I got on reaching London was this: my mother did not understand that her daughter was dead, and they were waiting for me to tell her. ”

“ Then he sauntered to the telegrapher's station in the corner of the hotel office and wrote upon a blank with swift decision a telegram which seemed a trifle at variance with the almost foppish elegance of his appearance. The telegram read:
Crooked as a dog's hind leg. Buy. ”

“ Time is too valuable these days of rush, to use a dollar's worth hunting through a big code to save a few cents in Telegraph Tolls.
Better use two code words, combining the phrases of each, for even then you will seldom fail to get your Telegram inside ten words.
The All Important Thing is Safety.
Very few realize the liability of error by the receiving operator in receiving cipher or code words by sound, where the connecting words are no help. ”

“ It is not easy to imagine that a man can honestly confuse between a short domestic telegram and a public message many hundred words long. Be this as it may, there was no difficulty in finding unchallengeable evidence of the untruthfulness of the statements attributed to Colonel Crealock in the above letter. At Aldershot I found the R.E. officer who had been in charge of the field telegraph office at Landmann’s Drift when I arrived there on July 5, and the operator who had despatched the contents of the official envelope of which I was the bearer from Ulundi. ”

“ The instructions given for the attainment of the proper forms in ordinary business communications are in no sense as rigid as those given for the military communication. Many officers now use the military forms for their correspondence with business firms, and, indeed, many of these firms have themselves adopted the military form.
The third type of official letter is that of the official telegram. It does not differ in principle from the ordinary telegram, and therefore does not require separate practice. Those who have conquered the field message should have no trouble in its composition. ”

“ Not only are the terms in which telegrams are frequently written so far devoid of context in themselves, owing to the curt way in which they are worded, as to render the sense of little assistance in estimating the correctness of a message received, but the letters of the telegraphic alphabet, being nothing more than little groups of dots and dashes variously arranged, are extremely susceptible of mutilation, owing to any lack of exact spacing on the part of the sending operator. ”

“ To a young man agreeably immersed in his own affairs such episodes became incidents very quickly. Only an unexpected obstacle evokes afresh circumstances and emotions which have become vague.
[136] Her telegram did this. Disappointment, retrospection, regret, annoyance, sentimental impatience,—these in sequence possessed the young man as he sat holding her telegram. ”

“ To make the telephone an annex of the post office or the telegraph has become absurd. There are now in the whole world very nearly as many messages sent by telephone as by letter; and there are THIRTY-TWO TIMES as many telephone calls as telegrams. In the United States, the telephone has grown to be the big brother of the telegraph. It has six times the net earnings and eight times the wire. And it transmits as many messages as the combined total of telegrams, letters, and railroad passengers. ”

“ The accompanying figure shows the transmitter, the traveling wire, and the receiver as it repeats a message. The instrument in its latest form is illustrated opposite page 314. In supplementing the telephone most usefully, this apparatus brings a fresh competition to bear upon the telegraph. In many cases a man of business has preferred to telegraph rather than to telephone a message, because a telegram as a written record affords proof in case of error or dispute. Now suppose that through a telegraphone a broker offers six per cent. interest for a loan ”

“ In Prussia, in 1867, a reduction of the charge by 33 per cent. had, in the first month, increased the number of messages by 70 per cent. The increase in business always had followed immediately, said Mr. Scudamore, showing that new classes of people took up the use of the telegraphs.
Finally, Mr. Scudamore stated that in 1866, the proportion borne by the total of telegrams sent to the aggregate of letters sent, had been: in Belgium, one telegram for every 37 letters; in Switzerland, one telegram for every 69 letters; and in the United Kingdom, one telegram for every 121 letters. ”

“ But the really original point is requiring applications by telegram to a telegraphic address! There's something in the fellow who thought of that, and something in his game; with one word he chokes off the million who answer an advertisement every day—when they can raise the stamp. My answer cost me five bob; but then I prepaid another."
"You don't mean to say that you've applied?"
"Rather," said Raffles. "I want two thousand pounds as much as any man."
"Put your own name?"
"Well—no, Bunny, I didn't. ”

“ Tjaelde. Ha, ha, ha! Allow me to inform you that at this very moment a sum is being telegraphed to me which will be sufficient not only to cover my present liabilities, but to set me straight in every direction!
Berent. The telegraph is a useful invention which is open to every one.
Tjaelde (after a moment's thought) . What do you mean by that?
Berent. One effect of the noise of your festivities was that I used the telegraph also. Mr. Lind will receive, on board the boat, a telegram from his firm—and I doubt if the money you speak of will be forthcoming. ”

“ The average European family sends three telegrams a year, and three letters and one telephone message a week; while the average American family sends five telegrams a year, and seven letters and eleven telephone messages a week. This one na-tion, which owns six per cent of the earth and is five per cent of the human race, has SEVENTY per cent of the telephones. And fifty per cent, or one-half, of the telephony of the world, is now comprised in the Bell System of this country. ”

“ “Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram. She would have come.” ”

“ The absurd way in which people have been summoned by telegraph to meet friends at places that not only did those friends not contemplate, but which either do not exist at all, or, at least, not in the situations some of these erring telegrams assign them, is within the experience of almost every one who is in the way of frequently receiving these pink missives at the post-office. ”

“ So that the work of a telegraphist is beset with pitfalls, and he requires all his wits and a fair share of intelligence to keep him right in his work. It may further be remarked that many errors in telegrams, which might be supposed by the public to be gross or inexcusable, have occurred in the most simple way, or have been shown to be due to failures of a very trifling kind. ”

“ There are, always a number of men watching the blackboard, figures on which are changed every minute by the attendants. Telegrams are constantly arriving from every part of the Union, from all over the continent, from all the centres in Europe, which are read by some one connected with the firm, and then displayed for the guidance of the watchers of the blackboard. ”

“ Telegram, Seward, London, to Van Helsing, Amsterdam.
“4 September.—Patient still better to-day.”
Telegram, Seward, London, to Van Helsing, Amsterdam.
“5 September.—Patient greatly improved. Good appetite; sleeps naturally; good spirits; colour coming back.”
Telegram, Seward, London, to Van Helsing, Amsterdam.
“6 September.—Terrible change for the worse. Come at once; do not lose an hour. I hold over telegram to Holmwood till have seen you.” ”

“ K. M. J. Paynter, of this city, the loan of files of telegrams sent principally from army headquarters on the south side of the James during the summer of 1864. The telegrams themselves (written generally on scraps of Confederate paper, and frequently in the autograph of the officer sending them) , possess a curious interest. They are valuable as giving the information received of the movements and intentions of the enemy, and the consequent orders in reference to the movements of our troops. ”

“ Even now they form the whole of a street to themselves. On one side is the telegraphic department, where all the telegrams are received. We can understand very little about this, because it requires a long training; but we can see something of the enormous number of people whose whole work in life it is to take and send telegrams. If we get there about five o'clock in the afternoon, we shall see some girls and little telegraph-boys hurrying about with trays, on which are piles of cut bread-and-butter, and with great tin cans, like the cans in which hot water is carried up for your bath. ”

“ For wireless telegrams proceeding from or destined for a country and exchanged directly with the coastal stations of such country, the High Contracting Parties shall advise one another of the rates applicable to the transmission over the lines of their telegraph system. ”