The Psychology of Telephony 33 



psychology of adaptation to liabit throws its tyranny oA'er ns 

 and holds that tyranny fast for many a generation. 



This is why we use stilted speech and why we shrink from 

 intimacy. We speak in the mode of the writer rather than in 

 the natural mode of the speaker. We labour under the burden 

 of distance, which is always present with us, and we speak on the 

 telephone, as Queen Victoria said of Mr. G-ladstone, just as if we 

 were addressina; a public meeting. The personal nature of a 

 telephone conversation has not yet been grasped. Of this fact 

 we can see various evidences. The telephone is used outrageously 

 in the drama. The speakers bellow through the instrument, 

 and their conversation is a repetition of what the other fellow 

 says: — " Mayfair 1861, that you Jimmie ? Oh, you are going 

 to catch the 12-30 to Bournemouth, are you 1 Ah, it will be a 

 very pleasant day. Yes, I like the Royal Hotel, too." There is 

 a typical stage conversation It includes what Jimmie said and 

 no more. In fact it is designed to convey what Jimmie said 

 and nothing else. It is the crudest of stage conventions. But 

 it is having one more influence in robbing the telephone of its 

 intimacy. After seeing a telephone play who would trust the 

 instrument with any secret at all *? What may thus be said of 

 the drama can be said with redoubled energy of the Kinema. 

 Watch the Kinema actress seize the telephone ! Watch her as 

 she brings it to her mouth ! You can literally see her shouting 

 into it. If ever there is a time when one rejoices at the silence 

 of the Kinema it is when the telephone is in evidence. Indeed 

 the telephone and its particular utility in disseminating sound 

 has become the very warp and woof of the Kinema drama. And 

 that is not the function of the telephone at all. It is the most 

 secret of methods of communication. To-day between 10 a.m. 

 and 11 a.m. there were some 20,000 conversations in Belfast 

 They were intimate and secret The operators do not listen to 

 them ; they have something else to do, for the operator's work 

 is so scientifically scheduled that she connects some 240 calls in 

 the hour, and you will at once see that she has little chance of 



