Victorian London - Communications - Telephone - description
THE TELEPHONE.
You can turn on the telephone just when you please, 
    As you turn on the gas at the main,
You can talk over continents, islands, and seas, 
    If there's aught that you wish to explain; 
You utter whatever you choose at one end, 
    And tis heard as a whisper - miles off by your friend.
You can stay in the City and learn from your home, 
    Of whatever may chance to befall:
If your wife from her duties should happen to roam, 
    And you'll know when the water-rates call.
You'll hear when the butcher delivers his book, 
    And you'll know when the policeman makes love to the cook.
You can fly to the lawyer when right makes you bold
    To get wrong, from the law, through the wire:
And your doctor prescribes for a fever or cold, 
    While you neither stir out from the fire.
And your medical man won't know what you've been at, 
    When the pills and the mixture prove death to the cat.
You can list to a concert and never go out, 
    But can hear every song that is sung;
You can easily know what a play is about, 
    From the time when the curtain's uprung. 
You can hear the debates in the House if you like, 
    But that twaddle might make many Telephones strike.
Here's the Telephone taking the words that we say, 
    And the Telegraph's marvellous flight;
There's the light that's electric turns darkness to day, 
    And the Photophone sounds through the night. 
While the Phonograph keeps for historical page 
    All the tale of the wonders of EDISON'S age.

Punch, April 16, 1881