Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/37

 “And you’re all right, too, Jack, if you’ll only speed up in your studies a bit.”

The result was that both dad and I made good. He was pleased with my work and I was tickled most to death with my new half-kilowatt transmitter. But that is what you call buying an education for a fellow twice. It’s a shabby trick to work on one’s folks and I’ve often thought about it since. The only way I can ease off my conscience is by considering that this mild kind of bribery has been worked by nearly all fond parents in one way or another ever since the world began.

Hardly had I installed my new transmitter than summer was upon us and we were rushing off for our annual vacation at the seashore. Not far from Asbury Park, where we were to spend the heated months, there was a Marconi station. I had a brilliant idea and to the end of trying it out, I made a box about four inches high, six inches wide and twelve inches long with a good lid to it and fitted it with hinges, clasps and a handle.

I arranged my receiving apparatus so that it would all go snugly into the box—that is, I made a portable receiver of it. Then I got a spool of