ry 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
own 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 li