Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1898-02-03
ORIGIN OF LETTERS.
THE RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN
AN OWL AND M.
Some skillfuI PaIIndromes-Orthography
of one Years Ago-wits and Wise-
acres OF the Olden Times Valued the
Anagram Very Highly. q

To invent and bring to perfection
the score or so Of handy sounds which
we call an alphabet has proved to be
the most arduous enterprise on which
the human intellect has ever been en-
gagged, says the Detroit Free Press.
Its achievement tasked the genius OF
the three most gifted races OF the an
cient world. 1t was begun by the
Egyptians, continued by the Semites
and finally perfected by the Greeks.
Writing began with kilograms (pic-
lures representing either things or
t%houghts), which afterward developed
into phonograms (the graphic symbols
of sounds.) Although our own writing
has reached the alphabetic stage yet
we still employ a number of phono-
graphic and Geographic signs. The
digits l., H., ILL.,, stood as pictures of
fingers. The v. was from the fingers
collected and the thumb apart; Wv. or
X. represents the two hands, while Nv.
and vi. are only pictures Of the hand,
with the subtraction or addition OF a
finger. kilograms 5000 years old and
which we are showing no possibility of
improving on, are such printers signs
as the index, exclamation and parallel.
II the history of any one of our al
phabetic symbols be traced back it will
be found to resolve itself ultimately
into the conventionalized picture of
some object. The letter M, for in
stance, was the picture OF an owl, the
ccnventionalizing process of 5000
years having left only the two peaks,
which are tho lineal descendants of
the two ears Of the owl, still retaining
between them a not inapt representa-
ton of the beak. while the vertical
strokes are all that remain OF the out
lines of the breast. The letter F is de-
rived from the horned Egyptian asp.
the two bars being the survival of rhe
two horns. while the vertical stroke
represents the body. The letter Y de-
scended from the same picture, the
two horns and body being retained.
Then, too, in those days there was a
~four-horned asp, which has come down
to US in the letter w, the four strokes
necessary to its making representing
the four horns, although 5000 years
seem to have been a few too many for
the body, yet that OF a Kansas grass
hopper may be found supplemented by
the people 5000 years from now. The
letter A was originally the picture Of
an eagle, Egypt being the eagles real
homeland, and r was taken from a
picture Of the human mouth. d was
evolved from a picture Of the hand,
and so on through the pictorial origin
OF all our letters. The immediate
%parentage of our English alphabet IL
most difficult to determine. BY a
series of easy steps the forms of the
very letters the reader sees before him
on this printed page may be traced
back for some twenty-five centuries.
These Roman types" as they are ap-
pronriately called. have not varied ap-
preciably in their forms from the types
used at Rome and Venice by the
Italian printers of the fifteenth CEN
tury. The puzzle OF all English literas
ture is giving twenty-six letters an
arrangement by which they will pre-
sent some new impression to the mind.
The more brilliant that arrangement
the successful the writer. The
writer's OF the English dictionary alone
have been able to fit more than 40, 600
words constructed from these letters
without much effort: the language is
said to contain 10000 The confusion
Of English sounds and letters is well
illustrated by spelling coffee without
n correct letter-kauphy. which
! spelling is nearer the original than
the one in use, for a pamphlet was
printed in Oxford in 1859 on 1.-THE VA
ture Of the Drink Kauphy, or Coffee"
Many eccentric devices of literature de-
pend upon the peculiar arrangement
OF letters. Some OF these have fine
sounding names. and are recognized
as famous recreations of the learned.
The palindromc. which is a line that
reads backward and forward, is one
Of the most difficult of all feats of let
ter juggling and has engaged the at
tention of the worlds cleverest brains.
While in exile Napoleon was asked
by an E~nglishman il he thought he
could have sacked London and re-
piled: able was / ere ! saw Elba'-
the most skillful palindrome on record.
Run the letters OF the reply backward
IL you would test It. A famous Latin
example Is the lawyers motto: 81
Nummi immunis." The following SEN
tence Is not only p~alindrome but ex-
traordinary in other respects: "Sator
arepo tenet opera rotas."
This spells the same backward and
forward; all the first letters of the
words spell the first word, and so on
through the second, third. fourth and
fifth. The last letters spell the last
word, the next to the last of each word
spell the next word and so on to the
beginning.