Family Rescued from Flames by ’Phone Call.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 20, 19 May 1909, Page 43

Family Rescued from Flames by ’Phone Call.

Another story told of the beneficent use of the telephone was in a case where

3 fire started in a vacant room >n the fourth floor of an office building. The occupants of the house across the street noticed the flames, and over rhe t.dephone aroused the inmates of the upper portion of the burning liiilding. who were asleep. If it had not been f r the possibility of telephonic common: iti>n the sleepers might not have been awak ened before the flames l>enea:h :n had cut off their means of escape. Sad are the stories to. i of the uses of the telephone at the Is lation ho.pitaL Patients dying of n.a’.ignant diseases. cut off by the nature of their diseases are able at least to hear live voices of their loved ones and convey to them their last mounrful messages and wishes. But all the tales of the telephone are not sad or tragic. It p’.iy- an imp irtant part in the business' conducted by Lupi I. Of »urse love messages flash u -- the wired in hundreds every day. but there also are stories told of where the actual r_i.’.rriage ceremony has been performed ty telephone. Two lovers living in different towns are impatient to be joined in wedlock. There are reasons which prevent either going to the other. Fifty years ago the situation would be hope-

le-ss. but to-day conies the telephone to th. rescue. The bride at one end of the wire, vouched for by reputable ■ < and the bridegroom and in a similar position. The clergyman receives the answers from .-ither end, and then to each in turn repeats the words which hind them together for weal or woe. It hardly sounds a satisfactory method, or one which would an peal to the average bride, but its novelty may compensate for its deficiency in romance.