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 Dong-dong-dong, can now sit at home at ease;—­and little need we think upon the mud above the knees of those who have property in that district and are running to look after it.  But for them the improvement only brings misery.  You arrive wet, hot/or cold, or both, at the large District No. 3, to find that the lucifer-matches were half a mile away from your store,—­and that your own private watchman, even, had not been waked by the working of the distant engines.  Wet property holder, as you walk home, consider this.  When you are next in the Common Council, vote an appropriation for applying Morse’s alphabet of long and short to the bells.  Then they can be made to sound intelligibly.  Daung ding ding,—­ding,—­ding daung,—­daung daung daung, and so on, will tell you as you wake in the night that it is Mr. B.’s store which is on fire, and not yours, or that it is yours and not his.  This is not only a convenience to you and a relief to your wife and family, who will thus be spared your excursions to unavailable and unsatisfactory fires, and your somewhat irritated return,—­it will be a great relief to the Fire Department.  How placid the operations of a fire where none 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.[N]

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,