Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1892 — Midnight Music. [ARTICLE]

Midnight Music.

Whoever has listened to a Boston fire-alarm on a summer night, say through the open windows of a house on Beacon Hill—first, the hells in the immediate neighborhood; then, farther and farther away, fainter and fainter strokes from the South End and North End, and at last some almost inaudible, echo-like peals from across the river in Charlestown, or even from East Boston—whoever has heard this will be ready to appreciate a story told in the New York Tribune:

When the Rev. Brooke Herford first came to Boston, several years ago, he was the guest of Rev. Edward Everett Hale over night. In the morning he came down stairs with a look of pleased surprise on his face. “What a delightful custom you have here,” he said, “of chiming the bells at midnight!” His host and hostess looked at him in silence, wondering if he had taken leave of his senses. “Yes,” continued the guest, “I got up and leaned out of the window to listen. It was a pretty air they played, although I did not recognize it.” “This,” said Dr. Hale, telling the story afterward, “was the first time I ever heard of a fire-alarm being taken for a symphony. ” A lens for seeing under water gives a distinct vision of objects twenty or thirty feet off, the loss of extended sight under water being because an entirely different focus is required. The spectacles which provide this can be made by putting two watch glasses of threequarters of an Inch diameter and an inch radius back to back, or with the concavity outward. Many inanimate things appear to be endowed with reason. For instance, a collar button knows when a fellow has a sore thumb, and improves the occasion to refuse to do ijoty.