TELEGRAPHS ON THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT. 



719 



point for which they are destined either by 

 mail or by express messengers. All telegraph 

 agents and operators are authorized to receive 

 dispatches marked "Bureau restanf' 1 or 

 " Poste restante." In the former case, they 

 are kept until called for at the office or station, 

 to which they have been telegraphed ; in the 

 latter, the telegraph agent sends them in a 

 sealed envelope to the post-office at the sta- 

 tion. Cipher dispatches are at the present 

 time admitted only in Holland. Most of the 

 larger European states have hitherto refused to 

 admit them, principally for political reasons. 

 All dispatches may be registered. Persons 

 who send registered telegrams receive from the 

 station to which the dispatch is telegraphed a 

 telegraphic copy of the telegram as received, 

 with accurate information as to the time when 

 it arrived at that point, and to the person or 

 conveyance by which the dispatch was for- 

 warded on, if addressed to a place to which 

 the telegraph lines do not extend. All cipher 

 dispatches must be registered. The rates 

 charged for registering a telegram are equal to 

 the cost of the original dispatch. If the re- 

 turn dispatch is to be forwarded to a place 

 other than that from which the original dis- 

 patch was sent, the return dispatch is charged 

 at the regular rates of the tariff prevailing be- 

 tween the two points. Persons sending tele- 

 grams may add to them the words, " To be 

 forwarded," in which case the telegraph agent 

 at the station to which the dispatch is tele- 

 graphed, after trying to have it delivered to 

 the address contained in the dispatch, and be- 

 ing unable to find the person in question, at 

 that place, will forward the dispatch to the 

 place where there is reason to believe the per- 

 son, to whom the dispatch is addressed, has 

 gone, provided that that place is situated with- 

 in the boundaries of the states belonging to the 

 German- Austrian Telegraph Union, or in coun- 

 tries with which special telegraph treaties have 

 been concluded by the German- Austrian Tele- 

 graph Union, The sender of a dispatch may 

 prepay the answer which he demands from the 

 person to whom the telegram is addressed, and 

 have this answer sent to any point he may in- 

 dicate. If an answer of twenty words or less 

 is required, there must be added to the text of 

 the dispatch the words, "Answer paid," and 

 the sender has to pay for this answer the price 

 of a simple dispatch ; but, if the sender of a 

 telegram requires an answer of more than 

 twenty words, or of an unlimited number of 

 words, there has to be added to the dispatch 

 the following: "Answer .... paid" (for in- 

 stance, "answer 30 paid"), resp., "unlimited 

 answer paid ; " and a corresponding amount 

 has to be paid or deposited, to be accounted 

 for as soon as the answer is received. If the 

 answer is not received within a week after the 

 original dispatch has been telegraphed, the 

 agent ^of the station, to which the latter was 

 sent, informs the sender of it by a telegram 

 which takes the place of the answer. If this 



answer contains more words than have been 

 paid for, the sender of the dispatch has to make 

 good the difference. 



All known telegraph charges have to be 

 paid to the agent at the time the telegram is 

 handed to him. The charges for forwarding 

 registered dispatches to places to which the 

 public telegraph lines do not extend, by mail, 

 express messengers, or private railroad tele- 

 graphs, have likewise to be prepaid by the 

 sender of the telegrams ; but the charges for 

 forwarding non-registered dispatches in the 

 same manner, and for telegraphing dispatches 

 from places where the persons to whom they 

 are addressed cannot be found, to points to 

 which they have removed, are collected on de- 

 livery. 



The following rules prevail in regard to the 

 calculation of the number of words contained 

 in a dispatch : Every thing which the sender 

 of the dispatch adds to the original text, for 

 the purpose of securing the prompt delivery of 

 the telegram, is counted ; hence, the telegraph 

 agent charges him for the address, the signa- 

 ture, the names which may be appended to it 

 as attests, remarks concerning prepaid answers, 

 registered dispatches or such as are to be for- 

 warded on to other points from the station, "to 

 which they are originally sent. No word is 

 allowed to have more than seven syllables. The 

 additional syllable or syllables are counted as 

 a separate word. If words are connected by a 

 hyphen, or contracted by an apostrophe (for 

 instance, qu^il), the separate words are counted. 

 Numbers written in figures are counted as 

 many words as they contain groups of five 

 words ; the additional figures are counted as a 

 separate word. Separate characters, letters, 

 and figures, are counted as words. The under- 

 lining of one or several words, provided the 

 latter are not interrupted by non-underlined 

 words, is also counted as a word. Marks of 

 punctuation belonging to the text of the dis- 

 patch, such as apostrophes, hyphens, quota- 

 tion-marks, parentheses, are not counted ; but 

 all marks which cannot be traced and repre- 

 sented by the telegraph are counted as words. 

 Periods, commas, etc., used in forming num- 

 bers, are counted as one figure. In cipher dis- 

 patches, every five ciphers are counted as one 

 word. 



In some of the states belonging to the Ger- 

 man-Austrian Telegraph Union, there exist 

 the following special regulations concerning the 

 use of the telegraph lines within the bounda- 

 ries of those states. 



1. In the grand-duchy of Baden, dispatches 

 sent to any point of the state, and containing 

 ten words or less, cost eighteen kreutzers ; one 

 kreutzer is charged for every additional word. 



2. In the kingdom of Bavaria, dispatches 

 sent to any point of the state, and containing 

 twenty words or less, cost twenty-eight kreut- 

 zers ; fourteen kreutzers are charged for every 

 additional ten words, and, besides, two kreut- 

 zers for the blank. The same charges are made 



