There was the Chief of the Mouth of the River and the Chief of the Upper Current of the River. The former was very vain-glorious, and therefore wished to put the latter to shame or to kill him by engaging him in an attempt to perform something impossible. So he sent for him and said: "The sea is a useful thing, in so far as it is the original home of the fish which come up the river. But it is very destructive in stormy weather, when it beats wildly upon the beach. Do you now drink it dry, so that there may be rivers and dry land only. If you cannot do so, then forfeit all your possessions." The other said, greatly to the vain-glorious man's surprise: "I accept the challenge." So, on their going down to the beach, the Chief of the Upper Current of the River took a cup and scooped up a little of the sea-water with it, drank a few drops, and said: "In the sea-water itself there is no harm. It is some of the rivers flowing into it that are poisonous. Do you, therefore, first close the mouths of all the rivers both in Aino-land and in Japan, and prevent them from flowing into the sea, and then I will undertake to drink the sea dry." Hereupon the Chief of the Mouth of the River felt ashamed, acknowledged his error, and gave all his treasures to his rival. * * * * * Such an idea as this of first "stopping the rivers" might well have been conceived independently by different peoples, but surely not by such a race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos, who must have got the story from the Japanese, who in their turn probably derived it from some Indian-Buddhist source--perhaps a version of the Book of Sindibad. Of course, the several European versions and variants have been copied out of one book into another, and independent invention is out of the question. IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. _Orl._ Whom ambles Time withal? _Ros._ With a priest that lacks Latin; for he sleeps easily, because he cannot study, lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning.--_As You Like It_. During the 7th and 8th centuries the state of letters throughout Christian Europe was so low that very few of the bishops could compose their own discourses, and some of those Church dignitaries thought it no shame to publicly acknowledge their inability to write their own names. Numerous instances occur in the Acts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon of an inscription in these words: "I, ----, have subscribed by the hand of ----, because I cannot write"; and such a bishop having thus confessed that he could not write, there followed: "I, ----, whose name is underwritten, have therefore subscribed for him."