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| Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The
very first time Robert Louis Stevenson handled a telephone was in the spring of
1880 inside a Magnolia Hotel in Napa Valley.
Stevenson
would at a later time christen the experience, “odd thing”. You and I would
have considered a similar phrase placed in his shoes. Imagine living in a city.
And all that time, not even by a twist of fate, you are never offered the
luxury of the telephone (which at the period in question was a fairly new
invention). Now, here you are, smack down in the middle of man-forsaken-forest
and voila! A total stranger presents to you a piece of civilization and
suggests you speak with ‘a man several miles off among desolate hills’. To
express it Stevenson’s own words. You find yourself chatting on the telephone
for the very first time!
This
famous author would adopt the occasion into one of his novels. In 1892, in his
novel, ‘The Wrecker’, a character, Mr. Pinkerton asks “May I use your
telephone?” This line is considered one of the earliest references to the
telephone in a work of literature.
A
telephone conversation on the edge of civilization was all it took to provoke a
scene in a novel!
We
all could remember, several instances we had a character in our stories dabble
at a not-so-common scenario and the best we could do was fumble over a thousand
little things that would feed the suspense and spark the vibes in the reader’s
soul. Place those plots side to side with countless out-of-the-way situations
we have found ourselves in. Can you recollect the multiple times you waved
these off your mind like smoke in your eye? Think it’s time you start filling
that personal journal of yours with these odd things?
You
bet!
Keep
your pen bleeding!
Akpan
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