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To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed offends the eye, and also takes the expression out of the words.

La on, Makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf!

It doesn't thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have sucked the thrill all out of it.

But a written character with which we are not acquainted does not offend us-Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and the others—they have an interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is true of hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. The mystery hidden in these things has a fascination for us; we can't come across a printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we could read it.

Very well, what I am offering for acceptance and adoption is not shorthand, but longhand, written with the shorthand alphabet unreduced. You can write three times as many words in a minute with it as you can write with our alphabet. And so, in a way, it is properly a shorthand. It has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting look. I will write something in it, in my rude and untaught way:

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Even when I do it it comes out prettier than it does in Simplified Spelling. Yes, and in the Simplified

it costs one hundred and twenty-three pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it costs only twenty-nine.

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AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY

TH

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HIS line of hieroglyphs was for fourteen years the despair of all the scholars who labored over the mysteries of the Rosetta stone:

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After five years of study Champollion translated it thus:

Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all the temples; this upon pain of death.

That was the twenty-fourth translation that had been furnished by scholars. For a time it stood. But only for a time. Then doubts began to assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors. Three years of patient work produced eleven new translations; among them, this, by Grünfeldt, was received with considerable favor:

The horse of Epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this upon pain of death.

But the following rendering, by Gospodin, was received by the learned world with yet greater favor:

The priest shall explain the wisdom of Epiphanes to all these people, and these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of

death.

Seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely varying renderings were scored-none of them quite convincing. But now, at last, came Rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation which was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct version, and his name became famous in a day. So famous, indeed, that even the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the achievement itself make that not even the noise of the monumental political event of that same year-the flight from Elba-was able to smother it to silence. Rawlinson's version reads

as follows:

Therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of Epiphanes, but turn and follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple's peace, and soften for thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death. Here is another difficult text:

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It is demotic-a style of Egyptian writing and a phase of the language which had perished from the knowledge of all men twenty-five hundred years before the Christian era.

Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon our crags and boulders. It has taken our most gifted and painstaking students two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures; yet there are still two little lines of hiero

glyphs among the figures grouped upon the Dighton Rocks which they have not succeeded in interpreting to their satisfaction. These:

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The suggested solutions of this riddle are practically innumerable; they would fill a book.

Thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover the secret of God that our difficulties disappear. It was always so. In antique Roman times it was the custom of the Deity to try to conceal His intentions in the entrails of birds, and this was patiently and hopefully continued century after century, although the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded instance. The augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child can read coarse print. Roman history is full of the marvels of interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. These strange and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our admiration. Those men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery instantly. If the Rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it would have defeated them, but entrails had no embarrassments for them. Entrails have gone out, now-entrails and dreams. It was at last found out that as hidingplaces for the divine intentions they were inadequate.

A part of the wall of Valletri having in former times been struck with thunder, the response of the soothsayers was, that

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