pe," interrupted us by asking Mrs. Wilberforce if she
could give her the idea of an air in "The Butcher of Turin."

Mrs. Wilberforce had never heard that opera,--indeed, had never heard
of it. My angel-wife was surprised,--stood thrumming at the
piano,--wondered she could not catch this very odd bit of discordant
accord at all,--but checked herself in her effort, as soon as I
observed that her long notes and short notes, in their tum-tee,
tee,--tee-tee, tee-tum tum, meant, "He's her brother." The conversation
on her side turned from "The Butcher of Turin," and I had just time, on
the hint thus given me by Mrs. I., to pass a grateful eulogium on the
distinguished statesman whom Mrs. Wilberforce, with all a sister's
care, had rocked in his baby-cradle,--whom, but for my wife's long and
short notes, I should have clumsily abused among the other statesmen of
the day.

You will see, in an instant, awakening Reader, that it is not the
business simply of "operators" in telegraphic dens to know this Morse
alphabet, but your business, and that of every man and woman. If our
school-committees understood the times, it would be taught, even before
phonography or physiology, at school. I believe both these sciences now
precede the old English alphabet.

As I write these words, the bell of the South Congregational strikes
dong, dong, dong;--dong, dong, dong, dong,--dong,--dong. Nobody has
unlocked the church-door. The old tin sign, "In case of fire, the key
will be found at the opposite house," has long since been taken down,
and made into the nose of a water-pot. Yet there is no Goody Two-Shoes
locked in. No! But, thanks to Dr. Channing's Fire-Alarm, the bell is
informing the South End that there is a fire in District
Dong-dong-dong,--that is to say, District No. 3. Before I have
explained to you so far, the "Eagle" engine, with a good deal of noise,
has passed the house on its way to that fated district. An immense
improvement this on the old system, when the engines radiated from
their houses in every possible direction, and the fire was extinguished
by the few machines whose lines of quest happened to cross each other
at the particular place where the child had been building cob-houses
out of lucifer-matches in a paper-warehouse. Yes, it is a very great
improvement. All those persons, like you and me, who have no property
in District Dong-dong-dong, can now sit at home at ease,--and little
need we think upon the mud above the