"
[Illustration: "... Dennis, lying under the telegraph line, his left
hand still grasped the instrument"]
The apprenticeship was finished and the chevrons gave way to the
shoulder straps.
This time I thought surely I had heard the last of the telegraph, never
again was I going to touch a key. I had been at my first station just
about two months when one morning I appeared before the Signal Officer
of the post and plaintively asked him to let me have a set of telegraph
instruments. He did, and it wasn't long before I had a ticker going in
my quarters. There was no one to practice with me, so I just pounded
away by myself for an hour or so each day, to keep my hand in. I have
yet to see a man who has worked at the business for any length of time
who could give it up entirely. It's like the opium habit--powerful hard
to break off. I have never since tried to lose sight of it.
In 189- one of those spasmodic upheavals known as a sympathetic strike
spread over the country like wild fire, and it wasn't long before the
continuance of law and order was entirely out of the hands of the state
authorities in about ten states, and once more the faithful little army
was called out to put its strong hand on the throat of destruction and
pillage.
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