Part 3

"And I suppose that means that I am to be turned out of my bed at daybreak, and canter half a mile!" cried Jones, in a high and excited voice, as he bounced from his bed and began to grope sleepily for his clothes. His toilet was made amidst grumblings of "Confound their early services, why can't they stay in bed like Christians, instead of prowling about, and sending men out in the chilly morning air," etc., etc.

Jones's temper was soured for the day, and that night, as he was winding his watch, he said severely, "Jane, I'm going to draw the line at delivering messages. Tom, Dick, and Harry can come here and bellow into the telephone until they are hoarse, but I'll be switched if I'll be messenger boy any longer."

But messages continued to come and go, increasing rather than decreasing in frequency. People in the neighborhood fell into the habit of saying to friends in distant parts of the city, when leaving a question open: "Just telephone me when you make up your mind. I haven't a telephone myself, but the Joneses have, and they are very obliging about letting me use it."

So the fact that a telephone was owned by an obliging family circulated almost as rapidly as if it had been a lie.

There were times when Mrs. Jones hadn't the face to ask Susan to stop her work and carry these messages, so she carried them herself--trying to keep up her self-respect by combining an errand of her own in the same direction. There were a few messages, however, which remained forever indignantly shut within the telephone; as, for instance, that of the little girl, which came in a shrill, piping voice:

"Mrs. Jones, will you send your servant over to Mrs. Graham's to ask Milly where she got that perfectly delicious delight she gave me the other day, and tell her to be quick about it, please, for I'm waiting."

And another which came in chuffy, distorted, conversational English--regular "chappie" English, very hard to understand, but which she finally straightened out into: "I say there--aw--oh--is that you, Mrs. Jones? Sorry to trouble you, but would you be so awfully good as to send word to Mrs. Bruce--aw--that I'm awfully cut up about it, but I won't be able to dine there to-night. Aw--I wouldn't trouble you, but it's so awfully hot I can't go round to explain to her--you know. Thanks, awfully." The telephone was closed, and the awfully-cut-up young man, whose sole claim on Mrs. Jones was that they had once met at a party, was left to be healed by time.

He had for company in his fate the enthusiastic tennis-player, who, in the midst of "a little summer shower," summoned Mrs. Jones.

"I want to speak to Flannigan, the gardener."

"This is not Flannigan's telephone."

"And who is speaking?"

"Mrs. Jones."

"Oh, well, Mrs. Jones, I can give my message to you just as well. I want you to tell Flannigan to come and roll the tennis ground at once. He will understand. Tell him right away, please."

"Flannigan does not live here."

"Well, you can send him word, I suppose," in a surprised and offended voice, "to oblige a _lady_. It is _Miss Mortimer_ who is speaking," and there was an impressive silence. Mrs. Jones remembered Miss Mortimer as a high-stepping young woman whom she had met at a friend's house, and who had given her the impression of taking an inventory of her. So Mrs. Jones took pleasure in replying, "Miss Mortimer probably does not know that she is addressing a private telephone. Good day."

But it was Jones, the luckless Jones, who seemed set aside for the cruel buffeting of the telephoning public. One night, which he will ever point to as the wildest and wettest night he has known, he had settled himself into his most comfortable chair, with a pile of new magazines beside him, when he was disturbed by a summons from the telephone. He responded with readiness, for he was rather expecting a call from his partner, and to his cheerful "Hello, old fellow, I'm here," came, in a sputtering and wind-tossed voice, "Will you please tell Mrs. Goodson that as it is so stormy her daughter will not go home to-night?"

Jones turned and confronted his wife, and for a time words refused to come.

"Well, this is a little too much! Now think of an unknown voice barking at me to go out into a storm like this and tell the Goodsons that their daughter will not be at home to-night!"

The Goodsons lived just six squares away.

"And what will you do, dear? Why didn't you say plainly that you would not and could not go out into a storm like this--that they must send a messenger?"

"They shut me off without giving me time to answer."

"Well, call them up. Call them up at once."

"Jane, please have some sense. How do I know where Miss Goodson has gadded off to? How do I know what number to call up?"

"Well, I just wouldn't go."

"Oh, I'll have to. They are friends, and if they are expecting that girl of theirs home to-night and she doesn't come Mrs. Goodson will go out of her mind."

So Jones drove himself forth, clad in righteous indignation and a waterproof coat. The cold rain lashed him and the wind belabored his umbrella, and he was more than once obliged to pause under friendly porches to get his breath. At last the home of the Goodsons was reached, and spent and weary he staggered up the steps. Goodson himself opened the door.

"Hello, Jones, you're no fair weather friend indeed. Come in, come in."

"No, I'm too wet," he answered, pointedly (and he felt like adding "and too mad"). "I only came to tell you that Miss Goodson won't be at home to-night."

"My daughter! She is at home. Don't you hear her playing on the piano now? Come into the vestibule, anyway."

Jones walked in, with the rain streaming from his coat.

"Katey!" called Mr. Goodson to his wife. "Here is Jones come to say that Julia won't be home to-night."

"What?" demanded Mrs. Goodson, appearing in the hall and regarding Jones as if he were a mild sort of lunatic; "_Julia is_ at home."

"Well, I don't understand it," said Jones, plaintively. "I was rung up half an hour ago, and asked to come and tell you that your daughter wouldn't be at home on account of the storm."

"And do you mean to say that you stand ready to turn out at all hours and deliver messages free of cost?" cried Goodson.

"It looks that way."

"Well, you are an ass!"

"Don't compliment me too freely, Goodson, I can't take in much more; I'm soaked as it is."

Mrs. Goodson stood thinking. "Who could have been meant? Oh, I've just thought! It must be that Mrs. Goodson who sews for Mrs. Jones and me. And she has a daughter--a typewriter down town--and she has friends living in the suburbs. She has doubtless gone there to dinner and concluded to stay all night. But she lives just around the corner from you."

Goodson laughed loudly and brutally. "A bonny sort of a night for a respectable family man like you, Jones, to be skylarking around carrying messages for typewriting maidens!"

"Oh, come now, that's a little too much!"

"Well, old man, I'll show my gratitude for your friendly intentions toward me by going round to the telephone people the first thing in the morning, and complaining of you. You've no right to be running opposition to the public telephones in this way."

"_If_ you only would!" and Jones wrung his friend's hand while tears of thankfulness welled up to his eyes.

Once in the street, he longed for a contemptuous enemy to kick him briskly to the door of the Widow Goodson. The latter was evidently about to retire, as it was a long time before she responded to his ring. When, finally, she did come, she heard him calmly through and then answered languidly: "Yes, I didn't much expect Bella home to-night, for she said if it come on to rain she thought she'd stay with her cousins. Good night. Quite drizzly, isn't it?" peering out into the darkness.

Full of bitterness, Jones turned homeward. It seemed to him that his cup was full; and so it was, for it refused to hold more. As he entered his home, chilled without but hot within, he was greeted by an unfamiliar voice coming from the regions of the telephone.

"Give me Blair's," it said. "Is that Blair's? Is that--Blair's--B-l-a-i-r-'s, do you understand? Oh, yes, it is you, is it, Mrs. Blair? Well, say I want to speak to Miss McCrea--Oh--pshaw! you must know her--she's the young lady that works for you. Oh, she's out, is she? Well, when she comes in, tell her Miss Doolan told you to say that Mr. Brennan has broke his leg--she'll know, he drives Judson's horses--and me and Mrs. Judson want to know whether he's to go to the hospital or to his friends. You can send your answer to No. 999. They'll let me know. Give Miss McCrea my love and tell her not to worry about Mr. Brennan. Good-by."

Jones confronted a stately creature as she stepped into the hall.

"Look here, young woman, who are you?"

"I'm Miss Doolan, and I'm stopping at Judson's--as housemaid," she answered, so taken aback that for the moment her self-possession failed her.

"And to whom have you been telephoning?"

"To Blair's--Judge Blair's, over on the avenue--a friend of mine stops there."

"And are you in the habit of calling up ladies in that fashion?"

"It's a very good fashion, for all _I_ can see," she retorted impudently.

"And what business have you to order an answer sent here for me to carry on a night like this?"

"Mrs. Judson and me took you for a _gentleman_, sor, and we thought you wouldn't mind obliging ladies."

"Nor do I, but I don't know either Mrs. Judson or you, and I don't propose running errands for you."

"Oh, then don't bother yourself, sor--we can hire a boy," she flung back with a scornful laugh as she bounced out.

"Now, Jane, I want you to distinctly understand that the last message has been carried from this house. I have probably to-night sown the seeds of pleurisy and pneumonia broadcast in my system; I have walked twelve squares to deliver a message to the wrong person; we have had a baggage here using our telephone as if it were her own, and we have been at the beck and call of the unpaying public for the last six months. Now, if the telephone people are not here by noon to-morrow, to threaten legal proceedings against me (Goodson has promised to complain of me) for undermining their business, I shall have that wretched instrument dragged away, body and soul, and we will try some other form of economy in the future."

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LABORATORY AT HARVARD.

BY HERBERT NICHOLS, PH.D.,

Instructor in Psychology, Harvard University.

EDITOR'S NOTE.--The illustrations of this article are from photographs, specially taken for the Harvard University Exhibit at the World's Fair.

What do they do there?

What do they expect to come out of it?

The notion of a mental laboratory is still a mystery to most persons. They ask themselves the above questions, and many feel as they do so an uncanny shiver. They cannot realize that the study of the mind is already an established natural science, here, at sober Harvard, in all the leading universities, and free of spooks and mediums.

Yet a psychological laboratory looks much like any other modern laboratory. Around the rooms run glass-cases filled with fine instruments. Shelves line up, row after row, of specimen-jars and bottles. Charts cover the remainder of the walls. The tables and floors are crowded with working apparatus. Two large rooms and one small one are now occupied at Harvard. Four more rooms will be added to these this summer.

Also, the spirit that reigns in these rooms is the same that is found in other laboratories of exact science. This is the important thing. The minds of these workers are not wandering in dialectics and vagrant hypotheses. Reverence has opened her eyes. Hypotheses they have, and must have. Often they hold conflicting opinions. But the referee is always present--Nature herself. To experiment, to show the fact, is always the method of debate. This is the great advantage of the modern way of studying psychology over the old.

The American public is so practical that I feel I can alone satisfy its "whats and wherefores" by explicitly describing some of the investigations being carried on here.

EFFECT OF ELEMENTARY SENSATIONS ON ONE ANOTHER.

Here is a lantern throwing a steady light through a large tube. (See illustration below, the right hand group.) By transparent slides of colored glass or gelatine, the light may be made of any color. At the end of the tube is a box, like a camera. The operator covers his head with a cloth, and observes the color of the light as it shines from the tube through, or on, a tiny hole in the dark box. The size of the hole can be varied by moving slides, worked by micrometer screws so fine that they measure the dimensions of the hole to the four-hundredth of an inch.

The first step is to discover the "threshold" of each separate color. That means the smallest-sized hole through which each color can be distinguished. This varies for different colors. But now comes the interesting point. The size of the hole, for any given _color seen_, varies according to the nature of any _sound heard_ at the same time. For instance, in order to distinguish a given red, the hole must be larger or smaller, in proportion as the pitch of a musical tone is lower or higher, fainter or stronger.

The above experiment is one in a system of investigations, intended to discover the laws by which the simplest sensations modify each other under the simplest conditions. These are laws as fixed as the laws of gravity, and, once determined, we may move on to study the combination of these elements into the higher thought processes.

EFFECTS OF ATTENTION.

Another experiment will further illustrate this method of study. An apparatus is so contrived that a colored disk can be made darker or brighter by the operator, and a measure of the change be recorded. (See illustration on opposite page, rear group.) The persons operated on do not know what change is made, or whether any will be made or not. They first look at the disk for ten seconds, taking good note of its color. Next, the operator changes the shade (or not) as he sees fit. Then for another ten seconds the subject judges the shade of color, but this time performs meanwhile a sum in addition as the operator calls to him simple numbers.

The experiment is to determine how the appearance of the color changes, by reason of dividing the attention between observing the disk and performing the addition. Do the colors of a rival's bonnet really grow more glaring the harder they are looked at? To explain this is to touch on a social as well as an esthetic problem.

Diversion of attention changes the appearance of distances as well as of colors. A large frame covered with black cloth stands vertical. Two tiny white disks are held in place on the cloth by invisible threads manipulated behind the frame by the operator. When the disks are set a given distance apart they rest close upon the smooth black ground. The eye sees but two white spots in a free field, and may judge the distance between them without complication. This is done for ten seconds, as with the color disks. Then the spots are covered, and their distance apart slightly changed (or not) by the operator. Again they are shown, and now judged for ten seconds while adding figures. The mental process of addition changes the judgment of the distance.

You will say it is a familiar experience that the road seems longer or shorter as the mind is busy or not. But it is not a familiar thing to determine the law of such lengthening and shortening for definite distances, and under precise mental condition, as in the above experiment.

JUDGMENTS OF TIME.

Every woman knows that color has an effect on the apparent size of objects; that of her dress on her figure.[2] It is not as well known that color affects our judgments of time. Our next experiment examines this matter.

[2] In the diagram on the preceding page the white squares show plainly larger than the black squares.

Upon a cylinder, slowly revolving by fine clockwork, strips of different colored cardboard are fastened, and observed through a hole in a screen. (See illustration on the preceding page.) The time of each rotation is measured precisely. By observation it is found that the period of rotation _seems_ to vary with the colors on the cylinder. By combining colors differently through a long and tedious series of investigations on many people, it is being determined what part this sort of influence plays in mental processes. "When things look gay, time seems short." Psychology seeks the laws of such happenings.

LOCALIZATION OF SOUNDS.

They are the most familiar things which in our science become the strangest. _Not_ to know where you are when seasick, still less where your mind is, is common enough. Our next experiment will trace our power to know where sounds are to the same origin as seasickness.

Seasickness starts in the ear. In its cavity are three small tubes, each bent in a circle, and filled with fluid. The three sit at right angles to each other, like the three sides at the corner of a room or a box. Consequently, in whatever direction the head is moved, the fluid in some one of the tubes is given a circular motion. Hanging out into the tubes, from their sides, are hairs or _cilia_, which connect with nerve cells and fibres that branch off from the auditory nerve. When the head moves the fluid moves, the hairs move, the cells are "fired off," a nervous current is sent up to the brain, and a feeling of the head's peculiar motion is consequent.

As for seasickness: this nerve current, on its way to the brain, at one point runs beside the spot or "centre" where the nerve governing the stomach has its origin. When the rocking of the head is abnormally violent and prolonged, the stimulus is so great that the current leaks over into this adjoining "centre," and so excites the nerve running to the stomach as to cause wretchedness and retching. Deaf mutes, whose ear "canals" are affected, are never seasick.

But normally the amount of ear-feeling which we get by reason of moving our head in a particular direction comes in a curious way to be a measure of the direction of sound. The feelings we get from our skin and muscles in turning the head play a similar _role_. We turn our ear to catch a sound. We do this so frequently for every point, that in time we learn to judge the direction of the sound by the way we would have to turn the head in order to hear the sound best. Thereafter we do not have to turn the head to get the direction, for we now remember the proper feeling and know it. This memory of the old feeling _is_ our idea of the present direction. If we never moved our heads we never could have any such notion of the location of sounds as at present--perhaps none whatever.

MENTAL ORIGIN OF NUMBERS.

Number! surely there can be nothing mysterious here; no "law" to be discovered about one, two, three? Well, the next time you shake hands, ask the man what he feels. A hand. Then ask further and he will feel five fingers. Now ask rightly and he will feel any number of distinct spots of pressure. But the real pressures were practically the same all through. Why, then, did he feel first one, then five, then eight, ten, or a dozen? So with the objects we become acquainted with through any of our senses! Why does the same bit of nature now stand before us "one tree," and now a myriad of leaves and branches? Why do the same outer groupings fall into such different inner groupings? Why does not the result of each little nerve of the millions continually played on in eye, ear, and skin stand out by itself, and we have so many million feelings?

To explain this: the first time a child opens his eyes he sees, as Professor James says, but "one big, blooming, buzzing confusion." Not till some "whole" (knife) be broken up into parts (blade, handle) and each part be mentally perceived _in immediate succession the one after the other_ can the idea of "twoness" ever be possible to that child. The "twoness" is a feeling of distinct nature apart from the two terms (blade, handle). It rises from the "shock of succession." It is one of the "modified states" wrought by one element on another, which we studied in our first experiment. Once lodged in the mind, the feeling may be remembered and reawakened, like any other. Thereafter the two parts or terms may come before the mind, awaken this feeling of twoness, and _now_ stand side by side, simultaneously and numerically separate.

These are the primary laws of number perception. Our experiments illustrate and prove them. Though the nerves lying under a needle point are really several in number, the pressure on them is commonly felt as "one prick." The area is so small that usually, through life, all the nerves have been pressed together. They have not been split up and pressed enough times in succession among themselves for a memory of "twoness" to have been developed among them. But, by proper manipulation, not unlike some of the processes of hypnotism, yet perfectly normal, the "twoness" of some other group of nerves can be yoked to the feeling resulting from the pressure of a particular needle point. Thereupon the one needle will feel like two, as distinctly and clearly as any real two.

MENTAL ORIGIN OF DISTANCES AND SPACE.

By similar manipulations the simple needle may be made to feel like three or like four; now standing in a line, now in a triangle, and again in the corners of a square. But, since there is but one needle, what about the apparent distance _between_ these several points that are clearly _felt_? This is the most curious thing of all, and from the light it throws on the formation of our "ideas" both of number and of space, is the most important.

To explain this: our notion of distance results out of "series" of sensations, in the same way as our notions of number. To have any idea of "distance" aroused between any two points of skin, the line of nerves lying between those points must, some time during life, have been previously stimulated in a line of succession, such as would result from a pencil drawn along between them. A card edge would give no idea of "distance" until such a series had some time been previously experienced. The memory of the "series" _is_ the idea of the distance.

Within small areas of the skin, so few "series" have been experienced that no "distance memories" have been developed. Consequently pin-point areas commonly awaken no notion of distance. For some regions of the body these "limit areas" are larger than for others; at some places are quite large. On the back, spaces three inches apart may fail to give any idea of number or of distance. Every region has such a limit distance.

_Now it is this limit distance, the smallest distance for which a "series" memory has been developed for a given region, that always shoves itself in, as the apparent distance between the several fictitious points felt from the single needle in our experiment. On the back the one needle feels like two set three inches apart; on the forehead like two half an inch apart; on the tongue one-sixteenth of an inch; and so on._