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as one message seemed to leap up and drown out all the rest. It is possible to "cut out" a particular message from a score of others.

"That is what we call a dead-head message," explained the operator. "It comes from a steamer 400 miles out at sea, telling her owners when she will get in. It is the commonest of all messages." The operator nodded to his assistant, who reached over and pulled a lever on the wall. The quiet of the room was broken by the whir of a dynamo

The messages may thus be picked out of the sky and telegraphed or telephoned in an interval measured by seconds only.

"It is as easy to recognize an operator from his touch as you pick out a familiar voice in a crowd," the operator explained in the next lull. "They sound much alike to you, but you will soon get to know a man's speed, and touch of the key, whether light, strong, or hesitating. Almost every operator, besides, has some little trick of

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suddenly released, while the room was lit up with a vivid greenish glare. From above came the sharp crack of the sending instrument notifying the steamer far out at sea that her message had been received.

Every preparation had been made in the great station for economizing time. At any moment, some message asking for help may be picked up, when every minute is priceless. Without moving from his chair the operator can call up the entire country. He sits with a telegraph instrument and a long-distance telephone at his elbow.

his own. Then there is a great deal of difference in the machines themselves. Let me show you just what I mean."

A touch of the arrow on the broad dial, and a single message suddenly leaped out of the confusion. "See how powerful that message is," he explained. "That comes from the Government station near by at the Brooklyn navy-yard. They are sending to Washington. The message is in cipher, so I can't read it. Now take this one." The operator translated rapidly. "'Will be over after school . . .'; that 's from two kid

amateur operators talking, probably not more than fifty miles away. Here's another: 'Will meet you at dock with Mother.' The message is being relayed to an incoming ocean steamer. And so it goes."

A moment later the operator caught his own call. An incoming transatlantic liner, several hundred miles out, was clamoring to deliver her messages, and so, for the next few minutes, the operator wrote busily on his type-writer, taking down, as they came in, the numerous despatches addressed to all parts of the country. The messages were quickly relayed, some by telephone, others by telegraph, to their destinations.

"Many of the amateur wireless operators, boys and girls, too, are very successful, and they are all pretty good at it." The operator took up the conversation where he had been interrupted. "Sometimes just with a wire strung up like a clothes-line between trees, they are able to pick up many long-distance messages. I know one boy who catches messages sent out from Panama. I understand that a boy near here caught the news of the Titanic disaster among the first."

This seemed a good time to ask whether the wireless amateurs make as much trouble as some people imagine. Both the operators said, goodnaturedly, that they were a bit of a nuisance, although they had a good deal of sympathy for them, nevertheless. Most of these amateur operators do not wish to be annoying, and respond very promptly when they are asked to keep quiet. Their sending apparatus is not often very powerful, and no difficulty is likely to arise except when they are within a few miles of the great stations. The wireless companies expect that this will soon be regulated by law, to the satisfaction of all.

"As a matter of fact," the operator explained, "the wireless disturbance from the amateur wireless is limited to a few hours each day. The boys get busy early in the evening, soon after dinner, and they talk as only boys can, until bedtime. When there is nothing coming in, I like to pick out their messages and listen to them. They begin by sending out their own particular private call. There are thousands of them all over the country. Then, with their apparatus adjusted, they begin to gossip about everything under the sun. They ask each other for the base-ball or foot-ball scores, make appointments to meet the next day, compare their lessons. And they quarrel and talk back and forth by wireless in regular boy-fashion."

The important long-distance work is usually done late at night. When the amateurs are safely tucked away in bed and the rush of comVOL. XXXIX. — 140.

mercial messages lets up, the great station does its best work. The delicate instruments are tuned to catch the faintest wireless vibration from oversea. When the conditions are at their best, messages leap the entire width of the Atlantic, or wireless calls are distinctly heard from far west of the Mississippi. It is common to talk with Panama, and soon, when the new station is installed in South America, despatches will be sent from points far south of the equator.

The alarm call of the skies is the famous CQ D or S O S. The distress signal is reserved for cases of extreme necessity, and when they are heard, everything is dropped, and the machinery of the station is put in operation to catch the message and forward it to its destination. The signal is picked up by the great New York stations much oftener than one imagines, or on an average of about once a week. Many of these distress signals are from small vessels, often from freighters which have broken down and need a tug to bring them in. And since there is no danger to life, the public does not hear of them.

One of the most remarkable instances of the SOS call in the experience of the New York station occurred some months ago, when a large passenger steamer ran aground down in the Bahamas. She was more than 1000 miles south of New York. The moment after she struck, she began sending out the S O S for all she was worth. It was late at night, everything was quiet, and this station caught practically the first message, clear and distinct. Word was sent at once to her owners, so that they were informed within a few minutes after the accident. Then there were the Titanic and the Republic. In the old days before wireless telegraphy, these ships would have gone down and the world would probably never have known what happened to them.

There is a great deal of interesting information floating about the air every hour of the day. Every steamship line, or wireless station, whether for private, commercial, or government use, has its own code or signal which it sends out before beginning a message. Upward of 200 such signals are in use within striking distance of New York. There is even a wireless newspaper service which is sent out broadcast at regular intervals. The ships far out at sea are on the lookout for this news, which is posted on the ships, or printed daily in the ships' newspapers. The news contains a summary of the happenings of importance, fires, elections, accidents, even interviews with prominent people, and winds up with the quotations from the stock-exchange.

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FASTNET LIGHT, OFF THE COAST OF IRELAND.

these men will be in touch with the affairs of the world, and learn the news as quickly as the man who reads the latest editions of the newspapers. For it has been proposed that in some of the lighthouses along our coasts a wireless equipment should be installed, and supplement the work now done by the beacon light. The advisability of doing this is being carefully considered by Government experts, and tests are being made with these "blind lighthouses" as they are called.

This plan seems very reasonable. To-day these great land beacons throw out a flash-signal or sweep of light, so that a vessel can recognize a particular lighthouse miles at sea. In very clear weather the most powerful of these lights are visible upward of forty miles, most of them, however, having a much shorter range. A warning by wireless may, of course, be thrown hundreds of miles to sea, telling a vessel many hours in advance that she is approaching a dangerous coast. Nor is this all. For, in the experiments now being carried on, these wireless signals do more than warn ships at sea of the perils of the shore-they actually enable a ship to calculate its

FASTNET LIGHT AS IT WOULD APPEAR IF CONVERTED INTO A "BLIND LIGHTHOUSE.

of triangulation. Such an extension of the wonderful system of wireless communication makes us realize that we have probably only begun to enjoy the benefits that this great discovery is destined to confer on humanity.

("Simple Thoughts on Great Subjects") BY GEORGE LAWRENCE PARKER

No matter what else we do in this world, we must make a living. Of course some people inherit enough money to keep them alive, but I think we shall see, before our chat is ended, that even they, too, must, in a sense, make a living.

In the first place, we must keep ourselves alive. That means we must have food, and clothing, and shelter. And these mean money. And that means helping to keep some one else alive. The world does not pay us for being here, but demands pay from us. We enjoy a privilege for which we must pay. At first glance this seems hard; but, looked at more closely, it is those who regard life as a privilege, something worth having, even though it costs a great deal, who really enjoy life. Very few great songs about happiness have come from countries where a living may be had for nothing. In general, it is true that very few have come from people who just live on fruit that drops off the trees into their open hands. They pick up a living, but do not make it.

In civilized lands like ours, making a living has come to mean that every one must earn at least enough to prevent him from begging others to keep him alive. And it is in this way that we must first look at the matter. When we leave school or college, we must begin to prove to the world that we are able to carry ourselves along. But it is not particularly pleasant to think of going on year after year doing the same thing, or even a number of different things, merely to prove that we can stay alive. I am sure we must find something more than this in making a living, or we will be a sad race of people.

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First of all, then, there is the joy of really making something. Every boy and girl knows that the dullest day is brightened the moment we say, "Let's make something." Whether it be paper dolls, or toy boats, or an engine, or any one of a dozen things, the charm lies in the word “make.” The minutes fly, and even if we have only half finished what we started to do, we have entirely driven away the dullness of the day. To make something, to actually bring something into existence, is, perhaps, the highest joy in life. The man who does this in a big or unusual way is called a genius. Out of a few words he brings into being a great poem; out of a few colors he paints a great picture; out of a stone he carves a beautiful statue or a great figure, like that of the Lion of Lucerne; out of ill-clad, undrilled men he makes an army, as Washington did.

Now, while every man who makes a living is not a genius, yet the real joy of creating can belong to each of us in just as real and true a way. If we put into farming, or banking, or our school work, the sense of making something, we get the great treasure out of it. When we fill any task with ourselves, we make something. A girl says, "I made the room tidy," which simply means she put something of herself into the disorderly room, and so beautified it. After she had made it tidy, it reflected something of herself; it looked like some idea of order such as she had in her own mind. A boy says, "I made a good recitation in school yesterday"; and he is right, for although the lesson was already there, it had to wait for him to come along and make it a recitation.

So it is everywhere. Making anything means, no matter how simple the task, that we bring out something that did not exist before; and that that something is to some degree like the maker of it. We get out what we put in. If any one wants to be miserable, the surest way is just to do things without putting his whole heart and self into them. Think of the mere outside of the tasks, and they are not worth doing. But once put yourself into them, and all that is changed.

Here is a letter from my friend. The writing is just some scrawls of ink, not very graceful. Nothing very wonderful here, surely. But I open it, I begin to read it, I smile, then I laugh, then I read farther and farther on; and when I reach my friend's name at the end of it, I have really found him. Why, then it is n't just a letter: it 's my friend himself! He has literally shut himself up in an envelop, put a two-cent stamp on himself, and talked with me.

The wonderful part of making a living is that, by making it, we show the world who we are. We carve ourselves out of our tasks.

So, then, we can go a step farther, and say that when we make a living, we make ourselves. Some one has put it this way: "A shoemaker makes the shoe, but the shoe also makes the shoemaker." If it were not for the shoes, there really would n't be a shoemaker.

Now notice the word "living"-the thing we make. It is n't so much money that we make, but something far larger. We make our own living. It is something entirely new; the world never saw it before! That is a wonderful thought! The world has seen other men make a living, but never before did it see you or me

do it, nor did it ever see just the living we make. It has seen many boys go to school, but it is very much interested to see just how you are going to do it. You must make the school live! You must, in turn, make the bank, or the church, or the railroad live, and in doing that you make yourself live. You keep them and yourself alive! And really this, in its way, is just as great a thing as making a poem, or a statue, or a picture. To make a living is n't the dull grind that many people suppose it to be. It is a constant surprise to us, and to every one else, too..

Now I promised to say a word about the people who do not seem to need to make a living, the people who inherit a great deal of wealth. If you watch them, you will see that they, too, work hard at making a living-in a sense. For they

are not happy unless they are busy. To many of them the securing of pleasure is a harder task than our toil is to most of us. Often they don't get their pleasure as they go along, but have to travel away off to Europe or, perhaps, Asia to find it. They have to make a living by spending a great deal of money all the time, while, to many simpler people, pleasure comes every day as they go about their work. So we need not criticize or blame these people too much; and least of all need we envy them.

It's a splendid phrase "Making a living!" It really means making a life. While we may seem to do it just to get food and shelter, we are really doing it to get vastly greater things. I make myself, I make something for some one else, I help to make the lives of other people.

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