One of the very most useful of all inventions, but rendered
almost worthless & a cold & deliberate theft & swindle by the
black scoundrelism & selfishness of the companies of chartered
robbers who conduct it. - Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals,
Volume 3, Notebook 30, August 1890-June 1891 Illustration of
earliest telephone from advertising art. It is my heart-warm and
world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us,
the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the
despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every
man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may
eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest
and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone. - A
version of this quote was published in "Christmas Greetings,"
Boston Daily Globe, December 25, 1890, p. 3. The Globe printing
eliminated the phrase in the above parenthesis and changed the
word "except" to "escape." The version here is from Caroline
Harnsberger's Mark Twain at Your