it 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 your 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.[N]

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
count