PRIVATE LINE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Private line

... on. Greatly to their relief, there was a telephone in the place. True it was only a party line, set up by some neighboring farmers for their own private use, but one of the subscribers, to whose home the private line ran, had a long distance instrument, and after a talk with him, this man promised Tom to call up Mr. Swift and acquaint him with the fact that his son and Jackson were all right, and would ...

— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton