FUN BY TELEGRAPH - 1865

IRISH, TELEGRAPH

Posted By: Cheryl Locher Moonen (email)
Date: 7/27/2016 at 10:07:22

Dubuque Herald, Sept. 13,1865

FUN BY TELEGRAPH – Among the telegraph repairers on the line from Dubuque to Cedar Falls recently was an Irishman whose duty it was to climb some of the poles to adjust and correct broken wires. Once, when near the top of one of the poles, he accidentally made the connection so as to give him a good shock of the batteries at the ends of the line. He let everything go, except clinging to the pole by his legs, exclaiming “ Be jabbers but the news has jest gone all through me.” At another time his companion played the “connection trick” upon him. He had to wade through several feet of water with a wire in one hand to reach a pole. As soon as he entered the water one of the “boys” touched his legs with the other end of the wire. He leaped out of the water frightened enough to curse the “baste of a toad that bit him on the leg in the water.” He thinks toads and telegraphs are very dangerous and likely to bite or blow up a man at any moment.