Now I am stripping myself of one of the private comforts of my life, (but what will one not do for mankind?) when I explain that this simple alphabet need not be confined to electrical signals. Long and short make it all,—­and wherever long and short can be combined, be it in marks, sounds, sneezes, fainting-fits, canes, or children, ideas can be conveyed by this arrangement of the long and short together.  Only last night I was talking scandal with Mrs. Wilberforce at a summer party at the Hammersmiths.  To my amazement, my wife, who scarcely can play “The Fisher’s Hornpipe,” interrupted us by asking Mrs. Wilberforce if she could give her the idea of an air in “The Butcher of Turin.”

Mrs. Wilberforce had never heard that opera,—­indeed, had never heard of it.  My angel-wife was surprised,—­stood thrumming at the piano,—­wondered she could not catch this very odd bit of discordant accord at all,—­but checked herself in her effort, as soon as I observed that her long notes and short notes, in their tum-tee, tee,—­tee-tee, tee-tum tum, meant, “He’s her brother.”  The conversation on her side turned from “The Butcher of Turin,” and I had just time, on the hint thus given me by Mrs. I., to pass a grateful eulogium on the distinguished statesman whom Mrs. Wilberforce, with all a sister’s care, had rocked in his baby-cradle,—­whom, but for my wife’s long and short notes, I should have clumsily abused among the other statesmen of the day.

You will see, in an instant, awakening Reader, that it is not the business simply of “operators” in telegraphic dens to know this Morse alphabet, but your business, and that of every man and woman.  If our school-committees understood the times, it would be taught, even before phonography or physiology, at school.  I believe both these sciences now precede the old English alphabet.

As I write these words, the bell of the South Congregational strikes dong, dong, dong;—­dong, dong, dong, dong,—­dong,—­dong.  Nobody has unlocked the church-door.  The old tin sign, “In case of fire, the key will be found at the opposite house,” has long since been taken down, and made into the nose of a water-pot.  Yet there is no Goody Two-Shoes locked in.  No!  But, thanks to Dr. Channing’s Fire-Alarm, the bell is informing the South End that there is a fire in District Dong-dong-dong,—­that is to say, District No. 3.  Before I have explained to you so far, the “Eagle” engine, with a good deal of noise, has passed the house on its way to that fated district.  An immense improvement this on the old system, when the engines radiated from their houses in every possible direction, and the fire was extinguished by the few machines whose lines of quest happened to cross each other at the particular place where the child had been building cob-houses out of lucifer-matches in a paper-warehouse.  Yes, it is a very great improvement.  All those persons, like you and me, who have no property in District