TO THE READER. THIS is a volume of recreative illustrations of a wonderworking Power, whose "sayings and doings have, within a few years, become familiar as household words, and food for anecdote,-in which the ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH loquitur. "Modern science," it has been well remarked by one of its brightest ornaments, "may be regarded as one vast miracle." * Among its marvels, the applications of Electricity, to speak advisedly, are the most startling. True it may be that its nomenclature is traceable to the electron of the Greeks; and some fourand-twenty centuries ago, the roving old bachelor, Thales, whilst strolling along the sea-shore, may have picked up a piece of amber, and from it produced the * Sir David Brewster. first electric power; though it is hard to associate the philosopher with a spark. Nevertheless, the glass tube and silk handkerchief phenomena belong to the moderns. Franklin identified lightning with electricity about a hundred years since; but, the adaptation of this mysterious power-the writing on the line-to the every-day conveniences of life, belongs to our own century, nay, almost to the present decade. The results are so novel, various, and extensive, as to have given a sort of romantic colour to almost everything that has been written about the Electric Telegraph. By viewing its phenomena in the light of inexplicable prodigies, enthusiasm has well nigh exhausted the old world of phrase, and had to imagine new; having found which, like the Fifth Charles of Spain when he had learned a new language, it had been like the gain of a new soul. Hence, one calls the Electric Telegraph "the High-way of Thought;" another, its messenger, "Epea pteroenta-winged words;" and, by its agency, Pegasus is outdone, and flying Childers clipped of his wings! With such "parts of speech" we have little sympathy; deeming them to be altogether unfitted for this occasion, if they be allowable upon any; hence, the anecdotic facts in this volume are related with as little of this fourberia as possible; the plain and simple narrative being preferred to the setting of "words, words, words." It should be explained, that the ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH is here described but incidentally, and that in as few and simple words as possible. Already, there are hand-books detailing its construction and working. Such grave matters we touch but slightly; our object being to show the development of the applications of the power; and this in recording anecdotically its most striking successes. To avoid tediousness, we have invariably striven to be short; and, like the coaxing story-teller, entertaining. Neither have we attempted to record the Progress of the Electric Telegraph; feeling the truth of what has been said of the American system,—that no schedule of telegraphic lines can now be relied upon for a month in succession, as hundreds of miles may be added in that space of time. Hence it is anticipated that "the whole of the populous parts of the United States will, within two or three years, be covered |