PARIS AND THE TELEPHONE.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12403, 19 November 1908, Page 1

PARIS AND THE TELEPHONE.

A correspondent in the '-'Queen" draws a doleful picture of what is happening m Paris since the great fire at the telephone exchange. Only ten days ago. she writes, a man said to me, "I should like to drop the entire French telephone system into the channel." .He was' very angry indeed. Everybody is after they have been trying to telephone m Paris Jot- they rarely get beyond trj'ing. Either the telephone pirl cannot bo troubled to get the connection or tho apparatus is out of order or the line is not free, or something. Never does th« course of telephoning run smoothly. But all that is over now, at any ratn for the time. For whatever lin.->s tho great fire at the central office has not disorganised are carefully attended to by the diminished staff of telephonists, and subscribers are, for the first time in their lives,' treated with some considorriin. Yet for all that it is a time for broken engagements and bitter recriminations. People who miss a rendezvous declare they forgot until too late that they had no telephone. Dressmakers who promise a crown and fail to send it after a third demand vow they have been unable to finish it because some necoss.iry orvbroidery was not forthcoming, owing to the telephone disaster. And as to one's cook. What bet-'TT-n r»y. tr;i journeys she ]>ns to r- r ,l- 3 f, 0 _ cause she cannot telophrw 'o tWo tradespeople and the man-.* +iir^ R in the weok her dinner hstr. bo«-.n hor>t waiting because "Monsimjr" could not tolenhone that he Ims T?pph "urioxncctodlv detained" she is unbearable: and the price of food hns ™r>e. "ii in a most extraordinnrv fn-,hion. We nre t.nid that a nrovisional offi<v> is being erected, but tn.it w 0 shall h:ivo to wait, years for the pormo.nont one. Thus we may count nnon waiting a cood deal longer than th« r.nnointod time before our pot grievance is fully restored to us.