our 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.[14]

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, 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 phonotypists
employ! 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
o