two, sight and sound. I see, as I write, that the particular
illustrations I have given are all of them confined to signals seen or
signals heard. But the dot-and-line alphabet, in the few years of its
history, has already shown that it is not restricted to these two
senses, but makes itself intelligible to all. Its message, of course, is
heard as well as read. Any good operator understands the sounds of its
ticks upon the flowing strip of paper, as well as when he sees it As he
lies in his cot at midnight, he will expound the passing message without
striking a light to see it But this is only what may be said of any
written language. You can read this article to your wife, or she can
read it, as she prefers; that is, she chooses whether it shall address
her eye or her ear. But the long-and-short alphabet of Morse and his
imitators despises such narrow range. It addresses whichever of the five
senses the listener chooses. This fact is illustrated by a curious set
of anecdotes,--never yet put in print, I think,--of that critical
despatch which in one night announced General Taylor's death to this
whole land. Most of the readers of these lines probably read that
despatch in the morning's paper. The compositors and editors had read
it. To them it was a despatch to the eye. But half the operators at the
stations _heard_ it ticked out, by the register stroke, and knew it
before they wrote it down for the press. To them it was a despatch to
the ear. My good friend Langenzunge had not that resource. He had just
been promised, by the General himself (under whom he served at Palo
Alto), the office of Superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Lines. He was
returning from Washington over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on a
freight-train, when he heard of the President's danger. Langenzunge
loved Old Rough and Ready,--and he felt badly about his own office, too.
But his extempore train chose to stop at a forsaken shanty-village on
the Potomac, for four mortal hours, at midnight. What does he do, but
walk down the line into the darkness, climb a telegraph-post, cut a
wire, and applied the two ends to his tongue, to _taste_, at the fatal
moment, the words, "Died at half past ten." Poor Langenzunge! he hardly
had nerve to solder the wire again. Cogs told me that they had just
fitted up the Naguadavick stations with Bain's chemical revolving disk.
This disk is charged with a salt of potash, which, when the electric
spark passes through it,