Wilberforce if she
could give her the idea of an air in "The Butcher of Turin." Mrs.
Wilberforce had never heard that opera,--indeed, had never heard of it.
My angel-wife was surprised,--stood thrumming at the piano,--wondered
she could not catch this very odd bit of discordant accord at all,--but
checked herself in her effort, as soon as I observed that her long notes
and short notes, in their tum-tee, tee,--tee-tee, tee-tum tum, meant,
"He's her brother." The conversation on her side turned from "The
Butcher of Turin," and I had just time on the hint thus given me by Mrs.
I. to pass a grateful eulogium on the distinguished statesman whom Mrs.
Wilberforce, with all a sister's care, had rocked in his
baby-cradle,--whom, but for my wife's long and short notes, I should
have clumsily abused among the other statesmen of the day.

You will see, in an instant, awakening Reader, that it is not the
business simply of "operators" in telegraphic dens to know this 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,[M] 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 s