accumulated by long lines of Egyptian priests. You have seen that the origin of the letters of our alphabet has been attributed to many different sources. One has been sought in the signal or gesture language, common to savage man, still used by civilized man under certain circumstances, and not unknown in its most general features to the lower animals. You may remember that the forms of letters have been traced back by some to the shapes of trees, and by others to the shapes of animals. The best reasoned origin of the Phœnician alphabet ascribes it to rude pictures of gods, men, animals, plants, and objects. A young man came to one of the wisest Jewish Rabbis to be a disciple. “My son,” asked the Rabbi, “what is your occupation?” “I am a scribe,” he replied. “Then,” exclaimed the Rabbi; “be thou conscientious, O my son, for thy work is God-like!” Many nations have held that their letters were the suddenly inspired inventions of demi-gods; others have maintained that only a god could have given so useful and admirable a thing to man. The divine origin of letters has been asserted in twenty different tongues. You have seen how many different earthly objects have been suggested as the source of letters. A Frenchman named Moreau de Dammartin, a Member of the French Institute, claimed that the letters of the alphabet were derived from the constellations which lie on the path of the earth around the sun; and certain old star-readers believed that they could read men’s characters and destinies by the aid of the constellations from which Dammartin derived the letters of the alphabets. And to-day there are people who claim to read men’s characters from their handwriting alone. As the writing of every nation is distinguished by certain strong national peculiarities, it is easy for an expert to decide to what nation a writer belongs. Having settled that, certain large characteristics which are common to all men, but in different degrees, can be seen in every handwriting. A certain number of men are calm, even-lived, sensible, and practical. Men of that class are almost certain to write plain, round hands in which every letter is distinctly legible; neither very much slanted forward, nor tilted backward; no letter very much bigger than its neighbor, nor with heads much above or tails much below the letters not so distinguished; the letters all having about the same general uprightness, and the lines true to the edges of the paper, neither tending upward nor downward. Exact, business-like people will have an exact handwriting. Fantastic minds revel in quirks and streamers, particularly for the capital letters, and this quality is not infrequent in certain business hands, as if the writers found a relief from the prosaic nature of their work in giving flourishes to certain letters. Firm, decided, downright men are apt to bear on the pen while writing, and to make their strokes hard and thick. On the contrary, people who