Candles were also used for lighting, but when they were carried outdoors they were very likely to be blown out by the wind. So Alfred put the candle inside of a little box, and in order that the light might shine through the box, he made sides of very thin pieces of cow’s-horn, for glass then was very scarce. This box with horn sides was called a horn lamp or “lamphorn,” and after a while this word when said rapidly became “lanthorn,” and finally “lantern,” which we still call such a thing to-day, although horn is, of course, no longer used, but glass. This is one explanation of the word as the old spelling was “lanthorn,” but it seems more likely that lantern came from the Latin word “lanterna.” Such inventions may seem very small and unimportant, and they are when you think of the marvelous inventions and wonderful machines that are made by the thousands nowadays. These inventions of Alfred were no more than the household ideas for which some magazines now offer only a dollar apiece. But I have told you about them just to show you how ignorant and almost barbarian the English, as well as other Teuton tribes of Europe, were in those days. How much superior were the Arab thinkers with their striking clocks. The English were just “getting a start.” 47 The End of the World What would you do if you knew the world was coming to an end next week, or even next year? The people who lived in the tenth century thought the Bible said[4] something that meant that the world was coming to an end in the Year 1000--which was called the millennium from the Latin word meaning a thousand years. [4] Book of Revelations, chapter xx. Some people were glad that the world was coming to an end. They were so poor and miserable and unhappy here that they were anxious to go to heaven, where everything would be fine and lovely--if they had been good here. So they were particularly good and did everything they could to earn a place for themselves in heaven when this old world should end. Others were not so anxious to have the world come to an end. But, they thought, if it were coming to an end so soon, they might as well hurry up and enjoy themselves here while they still had a chance. Well, the Year 1000 came, and nothing happened. At first people simply thought that a mistake had been made in counting the years--that there had not really been one thousand years since Christ’s birth. The years went by, and still people waited for the end. They re-read their Bibles and thought perhaps it meant a thousand years after Christ’s _death_, instead of his birth. As time went on, without any change, they began to think the end was delayed for some reason they could not explain. But it was not for many years after the millennium that people came at last to realize that the world was not going to stop after all.