When the telephone was invented and was ready to use, hardly anybody cared to install one. People admitted that telephones were ingenious contractions but nobody thought of getting one.

As a matter of fact, for a long time they were of little use in a  home. Since almost nobody had them, there was no one to talk to. The telephone company sent us circulars in which they made large claims: they said that an important department store now had a telephone and three banks had ordered one each and some enterprising doctors were getting them. But though people saw vaguely that a telephone might be a convenience if every household installed one, they decided to wait until everyone did.

Mother agreed with Father-she didn't like telephones either. She distrusted machines of all kinds. She never knew what they might do to her.The telephone seemed to her, and many other people, especially dangerous. They were afraid the electric wiring might give them a shock. Mother wouldn't even touch the queer toy. Besides, she said, she had to see the face of any person she talked to. She didn't want to be answered by a voice coming out of a box in the wall.

Little by little, however, telephones came into use. After ten or fifteen years, Father got one.

We didn't give it much of a welcome. It seemed to us rude and from the first it made trouble. It rang seldom but it always chose a bad moment, when there was nobody on that floor to answer. Mother would pick up her skirts and run upstairs, calling to it loudly "I'm coming! I'm coming!" but the fretful thing kept right on ringing.

The outer world now began intruding upon us at will. This was hard to get used to. Father met these invasions with ferocious resentment. When somebody telephoned him and he couldn't make out at once who it was, "Apeak up, speak up!" he would shout at the telephone, getting red in the face. "What is it, who are you? I can't hear a word you are saying. I can't hear a word, I tell you."

Father always assumed when the bell rang that it was a message for him. If he let  anyone but himself answer, he would keep calling out and asking who it was and what it was all about, while we tried, in the midst of his shouts, to hear some of the message. When we said it was something that didn't concern him, he was incredulous.

One day a new friend of mine, a girl, telephoned to invite me to lunch. Father answered the telephone. "Yes, This is Mr Day. Speak up! Don't mumble at me, Who are you? ...What? Come to lunch? I've had lunch ... Next Friday? ... No. Where? In Rivington Street? Good God! I never heard of such a thing in my life! Goodbye, Madam!"

"I think that was a friend of mine, Father,"I said.

"A friend of yours!" he explained. "Why, it sounded to me like some impudent pedlar's wife, arguing with me about lunching with her somewhere down in the slums. I can't stand it, that's all I have to say; I'll have the confounded thing taken out."

CLARENCE DAY

Clarence Day was an American author and cartoonist. He was best known for his 1935 War - 'Life With Father'. He was born on 18th November, 1874 in New York city and died on December 28, 1935 at the age of 61 in New York. 

He first joined New York Stock Exchange and became a partner of his father. 

Clarence Day joined navy in 1898 but developed a crippling arthritis and spent rest of his life as semi-invalid. This stay-back at home for arthiritis enriched him as a writer.