An old despatcher once said to me: "Sooner or later a
despatcher, if he sticks to the business, will have his smash-up, and
then down goes a reputation which possibly he has been years in building
up, and his name is inscribed on the roll of 'has-beens.'"
Before the despatcher comes the operator, and the old Biblical saying,
"Many are called but few are chosen," is well illustrated by the small
number of good despatchers that are found; it is easy enough to find
excellent operators, but a first-class despatcher is a rarity among
them.
I learned telegraphy some fifteen or sixteen years ago at a school away
out in western Kansas. After I had been there three or four months, I
was the star of the class, and imagined that the spirit of Professor
Morse had been reincarnated in me. No wire was too swift for me to work,
no office too great for me to manage; in fact visions of a
superintendency of telegraph flitted before my eyes. Such institutions
as this school are very correctly named "ham factories."
During my stay at the school I formed the acquaintance of the night
operator at the depot and it was my wont to spend most of my nights
there picking up odds and ends of information.
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