midnight
Even with our own delicately adjusted instruments we are prone to forget and commit this folly . But in the early days one was forced to uplift his voice at the telephone and if he had no voice to uplift woe betide his telephoning . And apropos of this matter , I recall reading that once , when Mr. Bell was to lecture in New York , he thought what a drawing card it would be if he could have his music and other features of entertainment come from Boston . Therefore he arranged to use the wires of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company and to this end he and Watson planned a dress rehearsal at midnight in order to try out the inspiration . Now it chanced that the same inflexible landlady ruled at Number 5 Exeter Place , and remembering his former experience , Mr. Watson felt something must be done to stifle the shouting he foresaw he would be compelled to do at that nocturnal hour . So he gathered together all the blankets and rolled them into a sort of cone and to the small end of this he tied his telephone . Then he crept into this stuffy , breathless shelter , the ancestor of our sound-proof telephone booth , and for nearly three hours shouted to Mr. Bell in New York -- or tried to .