, in language regarding which the dullest imagination
need not be at loss,

"Turn again, Higginbottom,
Lord Mayor of Boston!"

I have suggested the propriety of introducing this alphabet into the
primary schools. I need not say I have taught it to my own
children,--and I have been gratified to see how rapidly it made head,
against the more complex alphabet, in the grammar schools. Of course it
does;--an alphabet of two characters matched against one of
twenty-six,--or of forty-odd, as the very odd one of the phono-typists
employs! On the Franklin-medal-day I went to the Johnson-School
examination. One of the committee asked a nice girl, what was the
capital of Brazil. The child looked tired and pale, and, for an
instant, hesitated. But, before she had time to commit herself, all
answering was rendered impossible by an awful turn of whooping-cough
which one of my own sons was seized with,--who had gone to the
examination with me. Hawm, hem hem;--hem hem hem;--hem, hem;--hawm, hem
hem;--hem hem hem;--hem, hem,--barked the poor child, who was at the
opposite extreme of the school-room. The spectators and the committee
looked to see him fall dead with a broken blood-vessel. I confess that
I felt no alarm, after I observed that some of his gasps were long and
some very staccato;--nor did pretty little Mabel Warren. She recovered
her color,--and, as soon as silence was in the least restored,
answered, "_Rio_ is the capital of Brazil,"--as modestly and properly
as if she had been taught it in her cradle. They are nothing but
children, any of them,--but that afternoon, after they had done all the
singing the city needed for its annual entertainment of the singers, I
saw Bob and Mabel start for a long expedition into West Roxbury,--and
when he came back, I know it was a long featherfew, from her prize
school-bouquet, that he pressed in his Greene's "Analysis," with a
short frond of maiden's hair.

I hope nobody will write a letter to "The Atlantic," to say that these
are very trifling uses. The communication of useful information is
never trifling. It is as important to save a nice child from
mortification on examination-day, as it is to tell Mr. Fremont that he
is not elected President. If, however, the reader is distressed,
because these illustrations do not seem to his more benighted
observation to belong to the big bow-wow strain of human life, let him
consider the arrangement which ought to have been made years sinc