wn 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 since, for lee shores, railroad
collisions, and that curious class of maritime accidents where one
steamer runs into another under the impression that she is a light
house. Imagine the Morse alphabet applied to a steam-whistle, which is
often heard five miles. It needs only _long_ and _short_ again. "_Stop
Comet_," for instance, when you send it down the railroad line, by the
wire, is expressed thus:

... - .. .....
... .. -- . -

Very good message, if Comet happens to be at the telegraph station when
it comes! But what if Comet has gone by? Much good will your trumpery
message do then! If, however, you have the wit to sound your long and
short on an engine-whistle, thus;--Scre scre, scre; screeee; scre scre;
scre scre scre scre scre; scre scre scre,--scre scre; screeeee screeeee;
scre; screeeee;--why, then the whole neighborhood, for five miles
around, wil