A sentence or series of sentences could be engraved on wood and a page could thus be printed. But it was a very laborious and expensive process. That particular sequence of letters would not answer for the other pages of the book.

By the invention of movable type printing became an effective means for the diffusion of ideas. With twenty-six letters all sorts of combinations could be made. After one printing the type could be distributed and then recombined.

With a stock of clear-cut words, which are capable of being combined in any number of ways, we are able to express all sorts of thoughts as they arise in our minds. There are possibilities of surprise. The same word differently combined with others produces effects which delight us. Language becomes a living thing yielding itself at every moment to a fresh impulse of the mind.

Any phrase repeated too often becomes an obstruction to the flow of thought and feeling. It forms a clot.

Shakespeare speaks of "the witching hour of night." It is a good phrase, but he does not repeat it. Milton writes:

"They trip it as they go

On the light fantastic toe."

It serves his purpose, but it is not made a synonym for the word "dance." But the young man who writes of the party at Squire Higgin's says: "The young folks tripped the light fantastic till long after the witching hour." And the chances are that in his account of the next party he will fall into the same Shakespeare-Milton combination of words, which in his mind is now indivisible.

The study of fatigue has been carried on, not only in relation to living beings, but into the inanimate world, and we hear of the fatigue of metals. A New England granite dealer told me that Southern granite is stronger than the Northern. He attributed this to the fact that the Northern granite, while still strong enough for all practical purposes, had been more or less fatigued by its struggle for existence during the glacial period. In Georgia these stresses had been avoided and the granite retained a more youthful quality. The fatigue of words deserves a special study.

Words that are unequally yoked together are apt to lose their individuality. When there is

incompatibility of temper between an adjective and a noun, and they are not allowed to separate, they both lead a drab existence. The recognition of the right of each word to be itself, is one of the first conditions of good writing. All words expressive of admiration or reprobation are apt to lose their meaning. "Unspeakable Turk” expresses nothing but an inherited antipathy. By applying the epithet to some other nation it might be restored to its original strength. There is no objection to a young girl saying "terribly nice" if it seems to her amusing. There is something pleasantly humorous in the incongruous combination of adjectives. The person who first thought of it must have chuckled over it. The objection to it comes when it is used by somebody who doesn't think of it as amusing.

The emphasis on the teaching of the mother tongue is justified by the fact that language is something more than a tool of thought. It is a part of the very process of thinking. Our ideas are clarified in the very attempt to express them. In the effort to communicate them to others we make them more intelligible to ourselves.

HISTORY FOR THE AGEING

THE lessons of history are for all periods of life, and historians are becoming mindful of the fact. Mr. H. G. Wells has written a History of the World that appeals to the young reformer who is filled with a sense of exuberant moral vigor, but who is afraid that he may have been born too late for its exercise. What if all the great battles have been fought and the heroic age is passed? Mr. Wells reassures him. By a rapid survey of the history of mankind he shows him that everything has been leading up to the exciting predicament in which we find ourselves at the moment of going to press. The newcomer can plunge into the fray with the assurance that he has come upon the scene in the very nick of time.

Mr. Van Loon has been writing history for the benefit of the very young. By means of simple illustrations he has made history intelligible to a child who can read and enjoy pictures. As for the aged, they have always had histories adapted to a reminiscent mood, where "all the angles of the strife are rounded into calm."

But there is one class that has not been sufficiently cared for. I am thinking, not of the aged, but of the ageing. There is a period when a person becomes conscious that he is not quite so young as he once was. There is a slight consciousness of moral fatigue. He is not ready to give up the struggle, but he sometimes wonders whether it is worth the effort. There is a faint suspicion of futility. He is rather more critical of others than he used to be, and at the same time. less confident of his own ability to improve them. In regard to large public questions he is more apt to take gloomy views. He begins to view with alarm movements which used to excite his curiosity. He observes that there is a younger generation which is inclined to be obstreperous. When he hears prognostications of the utter collapse of civilization, he hopes that it may not come in his day, but he sees no way to prevent it.

At this period, the lessons of history seem to confirm him in a fatalistic attitude. The predestinarian theologian, who declares that what is to be, will be, may be argued against, but there is no getting away from the historian when he points out the fact that what has been, has been. It can be proved that every event has had