THE HUMOROUS SIDE OF DOTS AND DASHES. 



PA' EDWARD CURRY. 



" I'll put a girdle round about the earth 

 In forty minutes."— Park. 



WHEN SHAKESPEARE put this boastful utterance into the 

 mouth of his mischievous sprite, he doubtless gave vent to his 

 free imagination, and had no idea of expecting to see that active little 

 individual put the boast into practice, and girdle the earth in verity. 

 In that sombre tale of how not to do it, "Bleak House," Mr. Dickens 

 gives Ariel the credit of making this rash promise, a natural error in 

 which a?rial methods were confounded with the name of the latter 

 fairy, by an easy mental process. 



However, since Shakespeare lived and wrote, many generations of 

 men have been born into the world, fought their little fight, and have 

 been gathered unto their fathers, have smiled at Puck's folly and 

 egotism, and it has been left for this later practical age to girdle the 

 earth, not in forty minutes, but in a moment, in dead earnest, not 

 with with airy whisperings of nymphs and fairies, but with the brief 

 but earnest stories of the business, pleasures, comedies and tragedies 

 of daily life, flashed from continent to continent, and daily and 

 hourly. Puck's boast is thus more than realized, silently and mys- 

 teriously. 



Any person who has for a few years operated a telegraphic key 

 and worked a line in all kinds of weather and with all kinds and sorts 

 of operators, carries a fund of odd experiences and funny tales, which 

 he naturally lets die because of their, to him, commonplace charac- 

 ter, and I shall attempt to resurrect a few such, which may be new 

 and interesting to readers of what promises to be a new and inter- 

 esting home magazine. 



The Morse alphabet contains several spaced letters, the source of 

 most of the errors committed, and if those letters are not dotted out 

 with care, mistakes are liable to arise. For instance, a slight mis- 

 spacing of a letter turns protect into protest, and many an innocent 

 note has gone to protest through this cause. 



