The phone

The professional newspaper, "l'Épicerie-Crèmerie" tells us that a charming surprise awaits us at the start of the holidays. Our domestic life will soon be embellished with little scenes like this one. From now on, when you sit down to eat and as soon as you attack the appetizers, you will hear the telephone bell ringing. Precisely, one of your guests is late. You rush to your receivers. You then hear the echo of a feminine voice, suave, engaging, caressing, which will advise you in a persuasive tone not to start your lunch without drinking a glass of Port X and to carefully check the presence of pickles on your table. Z or Y mustard.

This is the latest find from our merchants: organizing individual telephone advertising at home. This advertising will be specially adapted to the times of the day and to the different occupations of daily life.

You don't need to be endowed with a powerful imagination to immediately realize the kind of existence that this innovation prepares for us. When the tyranny of the bell is added to the irony of these disappointing communications, the subscriber's chronic exasperation will not take long to take the form of furious madness. Mr. Léon Bérard, in a recent speech, denounced the misdeeds of the abuse of the telephone in modern civilization. What would he have said if he had foreseen this new aggravation of his laughter?

Tomorrow, when our minister collects himself in front of a blank page to throw in the plan of a beautiful harangue, his chief of staff will apologize for having to pass on to him an urgent and confidential communication. And the unfortunate will then hear a soft voice extolling the exceptional merits of unrivaled ink, an incomparable pen or a blotter defying all competition.

Between us, I will not be taken away from the idea that this terrifying news is secretly launched by our telephone administration, whose avowed aim, as we know, is to reduce the number of its subscribers, so that it does not arrive not to be used with the poor existing material. It is quite obvious, in fact, that a catastrophe of this kind would quickly reduce the format and the volume of the directory, which, in a short time, would take on the dimensions of a small pocket almanac.

But modern man will not escape his fate. When he has broken the tyranny of the telephone, the T.S.F. will be there to impose a new servitude on him. Advertising will still arrive at his home, wirelessly, through the intercom and megaphone. This will teach him to want to work miracles. What the devil was he doing in this galena!

EMILE