Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1898-11-13

1t is surprising how things gradually get changed about. Nowadays we use paper even for ear wheels and building material; formerly men used metal and bricks and lumber for writing material. In short, while we use paper for almost everything. our remote ancestors used almost anything for paper.
 Yet here as elsewhere, history in a manner repeats itself, The ancients wrote upon wood and clay; and to-day, we are again writing to great extent upon wood and clay, since our paper IS largely made up of these substances. The very latest scheme-the making of paper from cornstall1s-reyerts to a material similar to the reedy stalk of the papyrus from which the oldest pa- per in the world was made.
 The story of the different things that men have used to write upon is really very curious. The first antieipatory substances for paper was probably bone especially the flat shoulder blades of large animals. Upon these even the cave men. older than Adam and per iel 1AetAAl4 tiQAG AlldAA liell1 bQiiAsltis scratched rude hieroglypbies represents ing the animals, some of them now ex- tinct, which they had killed and eaten. The cave men had no alphabet, of course, but their pictures were q sort of writing-the record of successful hunt and feast.
 Agesla a certain Stioc philosopher resorted to the same expedient. Being very poor-though apparently well fed he inscribed his preeepts upon the shoulder blades of oxen. His library must have resembled charnel house We are told that Mohammed followed the same fashion, and after each fit of inspiration tumbled the scratched bones into large chests. Out Of this sarcophagus his devout editors ex. traeted the sacred texts. by sorting and arranging which they managed to con struct the Koran. That the result is rather lacking in coherenee need not surprise LIS.
 Mud seems a very unpromising ma terial for a book, yet whole libraries have been made of it. Indeed, in As syria, where this method was most popular, there was little else but mud to be had. So clay was nodded into bricks, stamped while soft with the strange triangular characters that tel of fcruelkings and their bloody victories and then baked either by fire or in the sun. Thus volume of moderate length might possibly weigh ton. Rather heavy reading!
 Stone, which isn't my lighter, has been used more or less from the earliest times 10 the present. It was q special fayorite n Egypt, both for writing and pictures. It is chiefly relegated to the cemeteries now. but some of the most interesting records ever written hay1 been preserved to Us by its enduring hardness. Yet stone is also used fol the most transitory reeords-for here belongs the sehoolboy's slate. But this IS not always used for mere cipher ing. The poet Hogg, a poor Scotch herdsman, always composed his verses on a slate, rubbing out and correcting till all was perfect as he could make 1t Perhaps n return to the slate might lee helpful in other cases.
 In shape almost exactly like fold ing slate were the tablets of the an cients. The leaves were made wholly of wood. however, and the inner faces were coated with wax. How the writ. ing was done with the point of sort of metal pencil called stylus, and ensures made by rubbing the wax with it's smooth, flat head, everybody Knows That secret messages were sometimes