s 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. I know that, for I am locked up in the vestry.
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 one except
me, and certainly I am not ringing the bell. No! But, thanks to Dr.
Channing's Fire Alarm,[13] 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 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 away 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 y