Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things and the cloth were gone.  I looked up and down the length of the bare boards, over which I had so often uttered my sentiments and experiences—­and——­Yes, I am a man, like another.

All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these old friends of mine, whom you know, and others a little more up in the world, perhaps, to whom I have not introduced you, I took the schoolmistress before the altar from the hands of the old gentleman who used to sit opposite, and who would insist on giving her away.

And now we two are walking the long path in peace together.  The “schoolmistress” finds her skill in teaching called for again, without going abroad to seek little scholars.  Those visions of mine have all come true.

I hope you all love me none the less for anything I have told you.  Farewell!

* * * * *

THE DOT AND LINE ALPHABET.

Just in the triumph week of that Great Telegraph which takes its name from the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, I read in the September number of that journal the revelations of an observer who was surprised to find that he had the power of reading, as they run, the revelations of the wire.  I had the hope that he was about to explain to the public the more general use of this instrument,—­which, with a stupid fatuity, the public has, as yet, failed to grasp.  Because its signals have been first applied by means of electro-magnetism, and afterwards by means of the chemical power of electricity, the many-headed people refuses to avail itself, as it might do very easily, of the same signals, for the simpler transmission of intelligence,—­whatever the power employed.

The great invention of Mr. Morse is his register and alphabet.  He himself eagerly disclaims any pretension to the original conception of the use of electricity as an errand-boy.  Hundreds of people had thought of that and suggested it; but Morse was the first to give the errand-boy such a written message, that he could not lose it on the way, nor mistake it when he arrived.  The public, eager to thank Morse, as he deserves, thanks him for something he did not invent.  For this he probably cares very little.  Nor do I care more.  But the public does not thank him for what he did originate,—­this invaluable and simple alphabet.  Now, as I use it myself in every detail of life, and see every hour how the public might use it, if it chose, I am really sorry for this negligence,—­both on the score of his fame, and of general convenience.

Please to understand, then, ignorant Reader, that this curious alphabet reduces all the complex machinery of Cadmus and the rest of the writing-masters to characters as simple as can be made by a dot, a space, and a line, variously combined.  Thus, the marks [Morse code:  .-.] designate the letter A. The marks [Morse code:  -...] designate the letter B. All the other letters are designated in as simple a manner.