Allen Chapman - The Radio Boys at Mountain Pass - or, The Midnight Call for Assistance

The radio boys had been intensely interested in this new application of their favorite study, and after the sermon they went up into the loft and examined the apparatus that had been used in sending. It was a vacuum tube set with two tubes and power enough to send messages out over the whole county. It had been set up by Dr. Dale himself, and that was proof enough for the boys that it had worked perfectly in sending out the morning service.

“What will radio do next?” asked Bob, as the boys were walking homeward.

“What won’t it do next is the way you ought to put it,” suggested Joe. “It seems as if there were no limit. There are no such things as space and distance any more. Radio has wiped them out completely.”

“That’s true,” chimed in Herb. “The earth used to be a monstrous big thing twenty-five thousand miles round. Now it’s getting to be no bigger than an orange.”

“What a fuss they made when it was proved that one could travel around the world in eighty days,” said Jimmy. “But radio can go round the earth more than seven times in a single second. Just about the time it takes to strike a match.”

“Gee, but I’m glad we weren’t born a hundred years ago,” remarked Bob. “What a lot of things we would have missed. Automobiles, locomotives, telegraph, telephone, phonograph, electric light – ”

“Yes,” interrupted Joe, “and radio would have been the worst miss of all.”

“They’re doing in the colleges now, too, something very like what the doctor did in the pulpit this morning,” said Bob. “In Union College and Tufts and a lot of others the professors are giving their lectures by radio. Talk about University Extension courses! Radio will beat them all hollow. Think of a professor lecturing to an audience of fifty thousand, instead of the hundred or so that are gathered in his classroom. And think of the thousands of young fellows who are crazy to go to college and haven’t the money to do it with. They can keep on working and get their college education at home. I tell you what, fellows, Mr. Brandon was right the other day when he said that the surface of radio had only been scratched so far.”

The next day at school the boys found that the story of their experience with the bear had had wide circulation, chiefly through the activity of Buck Looker, who took care at the same time, however, to express his belief that nothing of the kind had happened. There was a good deal of good-natured joking, and the boys in self-defense had to explain the whole thing in all its details.

At recess their story received unexpected confirmation, for there, just outside the school yard, was Tony putting Bruno, the bear, through his tricks while a breathlessly interested crowd gathered about the pair. Tony grinned at the boys when he saw them and Jimmy asserted that Bruno grinned too, but the rest of the radio boys thought that that was due to Jimmy’s excess of imagination.

A noticeable feature of the school work that day was the scarcity of pupils. All the classes were more or less sparsely attended, and the teachers were called to a conference with Mr. Preston, the principal.

“What do you suppose the powwow of the teachers was all about?” asked Bob, as the boys were going home after the session of the school was ended.

“About so many fellows being away,” replied Joe, who, as his father was the leading physician of the town, was better informed than were his friends as to the situation. “Dad says there’s an awful lot of sickness in the town. He’s kept busy day and night, and scarcely has time to breathe.”

“I wonder what the reason is,” remarked Herb.

“Dad thinks the water supply may have something to do with it,” answered Joe. “He says there’s a regular epidemic of typhoid fever, and that usually comes from impure water. He’s called the attention of the town council and the engineers of the reservoir to the matter, and they’re going to have an investigation. Dad says it may even be necessary to close the schools for a time.”

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