Practice in picture-making was bound to lead to shorter methods of expressing ideas. It was soon found that reduced pictures, or _picture-signs_, would suffice to express ideas. Thus, if the idea of sorrow was to be expressed it was not necessary to draw an elaborate picture of a sorrowful looking man like _a_ in Figure 4; a weeping eye would express the idea just as well. Instead of numerous figures (_e_, _f_, _g_, _h_, _i_) weeping and saying, "nothing here," a single pair of empty palms would say the same thing just as clearly. In this way a pair of clasped hands came to mean "friendship"; two trees meant "a forest"; a calf running toward water meant "thirst." These picture-signs, of course, assumed the form in which they could be most easily and rapidly drawn. The weeping eye became [symbol: eye]; the pair of extended palms [symbol: palms]; the forest [symbol: trees]; thirst [symbol: dog walking on water]. A simple picture of this kind became a fixed conventional sign for certain ideas; it was always drawn in the same way and it always stood for the same idea. Picture-signs (ideographs) followed picture-writing in almost every country where the people were progressive. China was writing its books with picture-signs many thousands of years ago, and it is writing them in the same clumsy way still. Even in highly civilized countries picture-signs have not been entirely abandoned. Examine the advertising page of a newspaper or observe the business signs on the street and you will find picture-signs--pictures that are always made in the same way and that always stand for the same thing. Each of the great nations of antiquity had its own peculiar system of writing, but the system that should interest us most is that of ancient Egypt, for it is to ancient Egypt that you must look for the origin of the book that is in your hands. The book in Egypt passed through the stages of tradition, memory aids, picture-writing and picture-signs (ideographs); then it passed into the _alphabetic_ stage. Since the alphabet is certainly the most wonderful and perhaps the most useful of all inventions, and since it is an Egyptian invention, it is well worth your while to learn how the Egyptian picture-signs--hieroglyphics they are called--grew into letters, but if you wish to understand the change you will have to give the subject very close attention.