one 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.

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 country 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 phono-typists
employs! On the Franklin-medal-day I went to the Johnson-School
examination. One of the committee asked a nice girl, what was the
capi