What do you want?" is the
answer.
"I don't want anything. What do you want? Why do you ring me up,
and then not answer me? Do leave me alone, if you can!"
"We can't get Hong Kongs at seventy-four."
"Well, I don't care if you can't."
"Would you like Zulus?"
"What are you talking about?" you reply; "I don't know what you
mean."
"Would you like Zulus--Zulus at seventy-three and a half?"
"I wouldn't have 'em at six a penny. What are you talking about?"
"Hong Kongs--we can't get them at seventy-four. Oh, half-a-minute"
(the half-a-minute passes). "Are you there?"
"Yes, but you are talking to the wrong man."
"We can get you Hong Kongs at seventy-four and seven-eights."
"Bother Hong Kongs, and you too. I tell you, you are talking to the
wrong man. I've told you once."
"Once what?"
"Why, that I am the wrong man--I mean that you are talking to the
wrong man."
"Who are you?"
"Eight-one-nine, Jones."
"Oh, aren't you one-nine-eight?"
"No."
"Oh, good-bye."
"Good-bye."
How can a man after that sit down and write pleasantly of the
European crisis? And, if it were needed, herein lies another
indictment against the telephone. I was engaged in an argument,
which, if not in itself serious, was at least concerned with a
serious enough subject, the unsatisfactory nature of human riches;
and from that highly moral discussion have I been lured, by the
accidental sight of the word "telephone," into the writing of matter
which can have the effect only of exciting to frenzy all critics of
the New Humour into whose hands, for their sins, this book may come.
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