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To say that this state of things is brought about by the exercise of the operator's will, is not to explain the phenomenon, but to put it in different terms. What is the will, and how does it produce such a result? Here is a man who believes, at the word of command, that the thing which all the rest of the world calls a chair is a horse.
As he went once more to the telegraph office, the only reason of which he could think for being glad that he was the principal owner in the only paying mine in the vicinity was that the operator did not dare laugh in his face. "Anything for me?" "Nothing; not yet, sir." The operator's voice and manner were respectful, but Van Lennop saw his teeth gleam beneath his dark mustache.
There are many physical operations where coeteris paribus the danger is in a direct ratio to the time the operation lasts; and coeteris paribus the operator's success will be in direct ratio to his quickness.
There fell a silence in the cabin. Anxiously the others watched the operator's tense features. Minutes passed. On a sudden he sprang up and tore off the receivers. "There's a steamer in trouble outside. Name sounded like Barona. Her engine's disabled and she's drifting. Can't be very far off!" The boys felt sober. "It's a hard night for a craft without steerage-way," said Jim. "What's that?
"Oh, but I couldn't run a piece of machinery like that," protested Bob. "Sure you can. That's why we brought it out here," said the banker. "Oh, no, I'm sure it would be too complicated for me," protested Bob. "That's where you are mistaken," said the agent, jumping down from the operator's seat. "Come here and I'll explain the mechanism to you in a few minutes."
"But folks will be awfully interested in reading about you, Miss Day," urged the man; "and the newspapers are going to do more than anybody else for you and your father in this trouble. You may make sure of that." But it was because of the operator's personal kindness that Janice submitted to the "interview."
Yet his hand clinched on the straw as it had clinched once when the operator's knife had cut down through the bones of his breast to reach a bullet that, left in his chest, would have been death. If in the sight of men he had only stood in the rank that was his by birthright, he could have striven for it might be that he could have roused some answering passion in her.
By eleven o'clock the things which he had predicted the night before had come to pass. A plump little man, with a fussy manner and Western clothes had been ushered into Bartholomew Berg's private office. Instinct told him that this was Griebler. Jock left his desk and strolled up to get the switchboard operator's confirmation of his guess.
He fell to wondering what they would do with him. Except in extremity, they would hardly murder him out of hand, and yet to explain to him why they had treated him so hardly, would be a delicate matter. But the answer lay in the operator's total freedom from suspicion that his captive had read the wire.
When his will allows a free passage to the will of God, without resistance or deflection, as light travels through transparent glass; when his will responds to the touch of God's finger upon the keys, like the telegraphic needle to the operator's hand, then man has attained all that God and religion can do for him, all that his nature is capable of; and far beneath his feet may be the ladders of ceremonies and forms and outward acts, by which he climbed to that serene and blessed height, 'Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of God's commandments is everything.
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