You connected the telephone."
"Yas, sah. Den I switched on that flyer thing yo' all has rigged
up."
"You switched on the amplifier, yes. Go on."
"An'--an' den I plugged in dish year wire," and the colored man
pointed to one near the top of the booth.
"You switched on that wire, Rad! Why, great Scott, man! That's
connected to the arc light circuit--it carries over a thousand
volts. And you switched that into the telephone circuit?"
"Dat's what I done did, Massa Tom; yas, Bah!"
"What for?"
"Why, I done want t' make mah voice good an' loud t' skeer dat
rascal Koku!"
Tom stared at the colored man in amazement.
"No wonder you got a shock!" exclaimed the young inventor. "You
didn't get all the thousand volts, for part of it was shunted off;
but you got a good charge, all right. So that's what did the
business; eh? It was the combination of the two electrical
circuits that sent the photograph over the wire."
"I understand it now, Rad; but you did more than I've been able to
do. I never, in a hundred years, would have thought of switching
on that current. It never occurred to me. But you, doing it by
accident, brought out the truth. It's often that way in
discoveries. And Koku was standing in the other telephone booth,
near the plate there, when you switched in this current, Rad?"
"Yas, sah, Massa Tom. He were.
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