are not sure of themselves, and are lacking in self-control, press unevenly, and with anxious-looking, scratchy hands. Ambitious people are apt to be overworked; they are always in haste and either forget to cross their t’s, or dot their i’s. They are also apt to run the last few letters of every word into an illegible scrawl. Besides those who do this naturally, there are others, silly or young people, who imitate the illegibleness in the handwriting of some one whom they admire. Flurried, troubled, and conscience-twinged persons have a crabbed and uneven handwriting. From all this it will appear that the claim of those who try to read character from handwritings is not so absurd as some people imagine. I have now tried to tell you as plainly as possible the main facts about our alphabet so far as its history has been puzzled out. Those who are not afraid of large words, and wish to learn at greater length, should read the articles on the alphabet in the “Encyclopædia Britannica” and also in “Appleton’s Cyclopædia,” and especially the two large volumes called “The Alphabet,” written by Mr. Isaac Taylor. The number of special books and treatises in French, German, and English, bearing on different languages and their alphabets is too great to mention here. We are taught the alphabet so soon after infancy that we naturally underrate its importance all our lives. Yet, who shall measure its importance to civilization? Writing has enabled mankind to store up knowledge. There are calculations and speculations which require so much straining of the mind, that advance to them and beyond them would have been impossible without the stepping-stones furnished by writing. For calculations, numerals and algebraic letters are the stepping-stones; for speculations, words and frequent sentences. The storing of ideas in books is often badly done, and people are always ready to groan over the vast accumulations of volumes and the very small proportion of ideas worth preserving. Yet, until volumes became general and no longer the mysterious conjuring books of the few, human knowledge was always more or less in danger of being swept from the earth by accidents to the few and scattered libraries. The more widely a book was spread in copies over the world, the less was the chance of its total disappearance. The printing-press aided in this kind of insurance of the knowledge of man against accidents. And neither printing-press nor alphabet need yet be considered as perfected. Our alphabet is not the best ever invented, but it is short and handy. As a subject for study, it yields to nothing that is connected intimately with the civilization of mankind. When we understand the history of the alphabet in all its course, and in all its minor points, we shall know the history of mankind ever since men first began to diverge widely from the beasts of the wood. THE END. [Illustration: THE LITTLE BOYS WHO LOOKED ALIKE. BY MALCOLM DOUGLAS.]