And Vail's captains are working now with almost breathless haste to give him a birthday present of a talk across the continent from his farm in Vermont.
"I can see a universal system of telephony for the United States in the very near future," says Carty.

"There is a statue of Seward standing in one of the streets of Seattle.

The inscription upon it is, `To a United Country.' But as an Easterner stands there, he feels the isolation of that Far Western State, and he will always feel it, until he can talk from one side of the United States to the other.

For my part," continues Carty, "I believe we will talk across continents and across oceans.

Why not?
Are there not more cells in one human body than there are people in the whole earth ?" Some future Carty may solve the abandoned problem of the single wire, and cut the copper bill in two by restoring the grounded circuit.