"The First of the Tigers was very bold, for his Night was still on him, and he said: 'The Promise of Tha is the Promise of Tha.
"The First of the Tigers said: 'He is here under my foot, and his back is broken.
"So the day came; and from the mouth of the cave went out another Hairless One, and he saw the kill in the path, and the First of the Tigers above it, and he took a pointed stick "
"It was a pointed stick, such as they put in the foot of a pit-trap," said Hathi, "and throwing it, he struck the First of the Tigers deep in the flank.
But for the First of the Tigers, this would never have been, nor would any of us have known fear."
"But--but--but," said Mowgli, turning to Baloo, "why did not the First of the Tigers continue to eat grass and leaves and trees?
As a boy, he played around the first telegraph line, and learned to put messages on the wire.
He persuaded half a dozen of his post office friends to buy stock, so that in less than two months the first "Bell Telephone Company" was organized, with $450,000 capital and a service of twelve thousand telephones.
Vail's first step, naturally, was to stiffen up the backbone of this little company, and to prevent the Western Union from frightening it into a surrender.
We must organize companies with sufficient vitality to carry on a fight, as it is simply useless to get a company started that will succumb to the first bit of opposition it may encounter."
His central idea, from the first, was not the mere leasing of telephones, but rather the creation of a Federal company that would be a permanent partner in the entire telephone business.
How to compete with the Western Union, which had this superior transmitter, a host of agents, a network of wires, forty millions of capital, and a first claim upon all newspapers, hotels, railroads, and rights of way--that was the immediate problem that confronted the new General Manager.
In Boston, the first pay-station ran three months before it earned a dollar.
Cornish was attacked as though he had suddenly become a public enemy, when he set out to establish the first telephone service.
The general business situation had by this time become more settled, and in four months the company had twenty-two thousand telephones in use, and had reorganized into the National Bell Telephone Company, with $850,000 capital and with Colonel Forbes as its first President.