TELEGRAPHS ON THE TRACK .289 



and I'll tell you why. That telegram is going to my 

 housekeeper ; she can't read or write a word, but 

 when the telegram reaches her she'll count the 

 strokes, arid understand that I shall be home at eight 

 o'clock to-night.' 



In the old double-needle days, I recollect that the 

 signs for F and G, and X and Y, sometimes played 

 havoc in the true meaning of telegrams. A faulty F 

 would transpose ' beef ' into ' beg,' and a badly sig- 

 nalled G, 'wig' into 'wife.' Again, X would take 

 the place of Y, and Y substitute itself for X with 

 alarming facility and disconcerting results. I remem- 

 ber myself, somewhere in the forties, sending the 

 porters at Waterloo on a hurried quest after a black 

 boy, said in a telegram to have been left behind in 

 the train. A dark, leather - covered jewel-case or 

 despatch-5o=2", it is true, was found on the cushions of 

 a first-class carriage from Dorchester, but no forlorn 

 little negro rewarded the strictest search. 



A well-worn version of one old story, which acquires 

 more and more power on repetition, lays the scene of 

 action in Liverpool, to which city a barrister on 

 circuit, who missed his wig, telegraphed urgently 

 from Preston to the effect that his wife was locked up 

 in the strong room. 



Another, which certainly comes from Liverpool, 

 is to the effect that a gentleman's wig had presented 

 him that morning with a fine box; but what is 

 possible in telegraphy is not always probable. 



Numbers, at any rate, in early telegrams, were the 



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