For Life's Sake.

Progress, Volume V, Issue 12, 1 October 1910, Page 13

For Life's Sake.

"My father and my grandfather had both been by profession teachers of deaf mutes in Scotland. My father was first in Edinburgh, and then in London. He came to Canada to save my life. I had lost both my brothers through consumption, and I was given about six months to live. I was a tall, thin slip of a youth then" — Dr. Bell is now a man of big frame, sturdily built, and tall — "but the doctor thought that if I could live in the open air I might get over it. My father had no money to buy any country place there; but he said he had friends in Canada, and could get a place there. He insisted on selling all he had and going to Canada. I was utterly depressed myself. Everybody took it for granted I had only six months to live, and I thought I was going to die. But I thought that if my going to Canada was any comfort to my mother and father, it didn't much matter to me where I died.

"Sol changed over to Canada in 1870, to Bradford, Ontario, and there I spent the whole time in the open air. In 1871 I was invited to Boston, and except for holidays to Bradford, I have been in the United States ever since. And it was there in Boston, three years later, that in the course of a quest which had nothing to do with the telephone, I started on the two strings of experiment which led me out upon the invention.