knees of those who have property
in that district and are running to look after it. But for them the
improvement only brings misery. You arrive wet, hot or cold, or both,
at the large District No. 3, to find that the lucifer-matches were half
a mile from your store,--and that your own private watchman, even, had
not been waked by the working of the distant engines. Wet
property-holder, as you walk home, consider this. When you are next in
the Common Council, vote an appropriation for applying Morse's alphabet
of long and short to the bells. Then they can be made to sound
intelligibly. Daung ding ding,--ding,--ding daung,--daung daung daung,
and so on, will tell you, as you wake in the night, that it is Mr. B.'s
store which is on fire, and not yours, or that it is yours, and not
his. This is not only a convenience to you and a relief to your wife
and family, who will thus be spared your excursions to unavailable and
unsatisfactory fires, and your somewhat irritated return,--it will be a
great relief to the Fire Department. How placid the operations of a
fire where none attend except on business! The various engines arrive,
but no throng of distant citizens, men and boys, fearful of the
destruction of their all. They have all roused on their pillows to
learn that it is No. 530 Pearl Street which is in flames. All but the
owner of No. 530 Pearl Street have dropped back to sleep. He alone has
rapidly repaired to the scene. That is he, who stands in the uncrowded
street with the Chief Engineer, on the deck of No. 18, as she plays
away. His property destroyed, the engines retire,--he mentions the
amount of his insurance to those persons who represent the daily press,
they all retire to their homes,--and the whole is finished as simply,
almost, as was his private entry in his day-book the afternoon before.

This is what might be, if the magnetic alarm only struck _long_ and
_short_, and we had all learned Morse's alphabet. Indeed, there is
nothing the bells could not tell, if you would only give them time
enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But,
without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and
every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail
Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard
should report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy had left town
for his country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to
speak articulately