afloat but Theodore N. Vail, who was usually the man of constructive the storms of winter, which might wipe out a year's revenue in a single even dividends. Evidently it had arrived on the scene in the nick of of ridicule and incredulity. It was paying wages and salaries and handily and cheaply by the labor-saving plan of hitching a locomotive to The first declaration in favor of an underground system was made by the inexorable fact that they did not know how to do it. into general use in 1886, if it had not first found out a way of hiding underground," said the sorely perplexed manager, "whenever a practicable method is found of accomplishing: it." All manner of theories were survive. So delicate a thing as a baby telephone could scarcely have corrosion, and the cost of roof-repairing, and the lack of room for Boston company in 1880. "It may be expedient to place our entire system more wires, the telephone men were between the devil and the deep sea--between the urgent necessity of burying their wires, and the A five-mile trench was dug beside a railway track. The work was done Fortunately, by the time that this problem arrived, the telephone business was fairly well established. It had outgrown its early days Had it been born ten years later, it might not have been able to time--after the telegraph and before the trolleys and electric lights. safely underground. day. The sleet storms were the worst. Wires were weighted down with ice, at Attleborough, Massachusetts, to find out exactly what could, and what imagination in emergencies, began in 1882 a series of actual experiments could not, be done with wires that were buried in the earth. often three pounds of ice per foot of wire. And so, what with sleet, and protected itself against the powerful currents of electricity that came