them confined to
signals seen or signals heard. But the dot-and-line alphabet, in the
few years of its history, has already shown that it is not restricted
to these two senses, but makes itself intelligible to all. Its message,
of course, is heard as well as read. Any good operator understands the
sounds of its ticks upon the flowing strip of paper, as well as when he
sees it. As he lies in his cot at midnight, he will expound the passing
message without striking a light to see it. But this is only what may
be said of any written language. You can read this article to your
wife, or she can read it, as she prefers; that is, she chooses whether
it shall address her eye or her ear. But the long-and-short alphabet of
Morse and his imitators despises such narrow range. It addresses
whichever of the five senses the listener chooses. This fact is
illustrated by a curious set of anecdotes--never yet put in print, I
think--of that critical dispatch which in one night announced General
Taylor's death to this whole land. Most of the readers of these lines
probably read that dispatch in the morning's paper. The compositors and
editors had read it. To them it was a dispatch to the eye. But half the
operators at the stations _heard_ it ticked out, by the register
stroke, and knew it before they wrote it down for the press. To them it
was a dispatch to the ear. My good friend Langenzunge had not that
resource. He had just been promised, by the General himself, (under
whom he served at Palo Alto,) the office of Superintendent of the
Rocky-Mountain Lines. He was returning from Washington over the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on a freight-train, when he heard of the
President's danger. Langenzunge loved Old Rough and Ready,--and he felt
badly about his own office, too. But his extempore train chose to stop
at a forsaken shanty-village on the Potomac, for four mortal hours, at
midnight. What does he do, but walk down the line into the darkness,
climb a telegraph-post, cut a wire, and apply the two ends to his
tongue, to _taste_, at the fatal moment, the words, "Died at half past
ten." Poor Langenzunge! he hardly had nerve to solder the wire again.
Cogs told me that they had just fitted up the Naguadavick stations with
Bain's chemical revolving disc. This disc is charged with a salt of
potash, which, when the electric spark passes through it, is changed to
Prussian blue. Your dispatch is noiselessly written in dark blue dots
and lines.