[The $30000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link book
The $30000 Bequest and Other Stories

CHAPTER X
158/175

Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world--a conversation with only one end of it.

You hear questions asked; you don't hear the answer.

You hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return.

You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or sorrow or dismay.

You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says.
Well, I heard the following remarkable series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted--for you can't ever persuade the sex to speak gently into a telephone: Yes?
Why, how did THAT happen?
Pause.
What did you say?
Pause.
Oh no, I don't think it was.
Pause.
NO! Oh no, I didn't mean THAT.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books