Daily Yellowstone journal., 1888-11-22
ORIGIN OF
- letter. A, II and o Survive An
GAanges-Interesting Historical Items.

D2anges-interesting Rhetorical items
When a child cries, the lips are apart,
md form, at each side of the mouth, a
harp angle, with sides of about equal
tngth. The sounds of the crying are
those assigned 10 the first letter of almost
every alphabet. The arrow headed or
wedge shaped characters in Use among the
old Babylonians and Persians till the time
81 the great Alexander's Asiatic conquests
were copied from the human mouth. BY
means of different combinations these
wedges or AS were made to represent
consonant as well as vowel sounds. But
b entire alphabet is made up Of these
wedges. II required many generations
probably to advance from A and B. Now,
look at achild's face, sideways. when the
bps are shut, and you see d natural b.
J. Put these two letters together and we
! have alb, which by being doubled gives
~Abp, the old eastern word for father. A
Sig dtsapduicauop gives am, then ANNA,
the old eastern forfi Of Hanis or mamma
IN the west, gust % ab5s was ahaQgsq
into papa and pcfeor holy father. The
xssg heSdaF bad served e record the
eAlstory, the literature, The religion OF
mighty empires-the old Assyrian,
Median, and Persian. They were traced
mostly on bricks. Paperhad not yet been
50 much as dreamed of.
= From A and B alpha and Beta) a
comprehensive scheme of phonetic char
acters must be worked out before the
leaf or rind Of papyrus can be used for
writing on. The lip letters N and P.
softened into T and V, WHICH last was
,rvocaryed as y, rr, -rnllca,,an merely
of y, We mae safely say A:1 Eras 9.
ne dental D. scftened intoT. which gave
rise to S. A series of characters was
gradually worked out, and the time came
when Cadmus, the man from the East,
brought an alphabet of sixteen letters
from Ph9nicia into Greece. Cadmus,
looked at as an individual MAI. dwindles
70 nyth-a shadow, He expresses in
legendary form the outcome Of a long
train Of almost forgotten facts, These
sixteen letters were expanded by the
Greeks to t~wenty-four. Light wooden
tablets covered with IA for writing on
We're adopted. But the pen was still Of
solid iron. like a PENCIL, sharp at one end,
with a aat circnlif head at me other for
blottipg out, when desired, what had
been written with the point. These
tablets were fastened together at the
back by wires. so that they opened and
shut like our books. For important
documents the edges Of the tables were
pierced with holes through which q triple
thread was passed and then sealed. 1t
ID to this custom that allusion is made in
the Apocalypse-''close sealed with seven
seals" This Apocalyptic book was writ
ten within and on the back" The an
clients used to write on the front side
only-even after they had given up
wooden tablets in favor of papyrus and
parchment. Tire back was generally
stained saffron or yellow.
The old Italians, too, of prehistoric
age got an alphabet from the east. The
letters were extended and modified until
they became very different in form from
those of Greece. But it is remarkable
that A. B, and o survive all changes.
They are copies of the mouth when emit
ting the sounds assigned them. Modern
typography has no doubt greatly i'm
proved the rude, early scrawl, such as
may still be seen on old g~rayestones. The
old Phenician and old Hebrew Aleph has
not the same position as our modern A.
They are almost horizontal, with a nearly
perpendicular line drawn across the angle
formed by the sides Of the letter. The
later Roman alphabet was spread by Ro'
man conquest. Our AngloSaxon fore.
fathers at length adopted it. They man
aged TO get up a sort Of literature. But
the age of pocket dictionaries, handy
volumes, the daily or ever weekly news.
papers was still a long way off. Art and
discovery have still a long apprenticeship
before we can inundate our postoffices
with valentines or photograph instanta.
neously on paper the tail of some mighty
comet.-London Stationery Review.