existence. It received no public notice of any kind whatever until and one after another they failed. Frederick A. Gower was the first of these. He was an adventurous chevalier of business who gave up an sentences. It was not welcomed, except by those who wished an evening's agent's contract in return for a right to become a roving propagandist. failure. He received dinners a-plenty, but no contracts; and came back optimistic Gardiner G. Hubbard, Bell's father-in-law, threw himself to the United States an impoverished and disheartened man. Then the native land. But from a business point of view, his mission was a total telephony for ballooning, and lost his life in attempting to fly across has been preserved. "I have been working in London for four months," he March 3, 1877, when the London Athenaeum mentioned it in a few careful Later he met a prima donna, fell in love with and married her, forsook 1878, with great expectations of having his invention appreciated in his entertainment. And to the entire commercial world it was for four or service to serious people. five years a sort of scientific Billiken, that never could be of any not found one man who will put one shilling into the telephone." Bell himself hurried to England and Scotland on his wedding tour in Next went William H. Reynolds, of Providence, who had bought five-eights dollars. How he was received may be seen from a letter of his which Europe, with dreams of eager nations clamoring for telephone systems, to Russia, Spain, Portugal, and Italy for two thousand, five hundred of the British patent for five thousand dollars, and half the right the English Channel. writes; "I have been to the Bank of England and elsewhere; and I have One after another, several American enthusiasts rushed posthaste to