TELEGRAPHS ON THE TRACK 287 



to provide themselves each with a dial-plate, having 

 the letters of the alphabet arranged around it, and a 

 magnet suspended on its face. Then, at an agreed 

 time, the friends were to retire to their respective 

 rooms — one in London and the other in Rome — and, 

 pointing the magnet to the required letters, signal 

 messages icithoiit a wire. 



On the other hand, there are those who regard the 

 telegraph with suspicion. 



The post-office at Penryn, in Cornwall, has been 

 for more than forty years, and still is, in charge of a 

 postmistress. Twenty-five years ago the incumbent 

 of the day had an uncomfortable experience of the 

 introduction of postal telegraphy. Whether in the 

 hurry of the transfer we had omitted to provide some 

 of the usual fenders of electricity, or whether the 

 season was unusually electrical, I do not now recol- 

 lect ; but, whatever the cause, it too frequently 

 happened that little balls of fire, with sharp crackling 

 reports, danced about the instrument before the 

 naturally affrighted lady's eyes, until the service of 

 the telegraph seemed to her on occasions to afford 

 the prospect of immediate destruction. 



However, Mrs. Tamplin stuck to her post, in spite 

 of the alarming demeanour of the telegraph. Not 

 so the aged sub-postmistress of a village in Essex. 

 Nothing would persuade her that a Wheatstone's 

 ABC was a model of qaiet behaviour, and had 

 never been known to explode. As the department 

 declined, in spite of remonstrance, to remove it, the 



