Stories and poetry are not likely to have been the first things written down. While communities were small and young, there was no need to write painfully what it was so delightful to repeat from mouth to mouth, and so easy for memories to retain; and when the stock of tradition and the treasure of song grew so large in any tribe as to exceed the capacity of ordinary memories (stronger, in some respects, before the invention of writing than now), men with unusual gifts would be chosen and set apart for the purpose of remembering and reciting, and of handing down to disciples in the next generation, the precious literature of the tribe. Such an order of ‘remembrancers’ would soon come to be looked upon as sacred, or at least highly honourable, and would have privileges and immunities bestowed on them which would make them jealous of an invention that would lessen the worth of their special gift. The invention of writing, then, is hardly likely to have come from the story-tellers or bards. It was probably to aid the memory in recalling something less attractive and more secret than a story or a song that the first record was made. So early as the time of the cave-dwellers, there was a beginning of commerce. Traces have been found of workshops belonging to that period, where flint weapons and tools were made in such quantities as evidently to have been designed for purposes of barter, and the presence of amber and shells in places far from the coast, speaks of trading journeys. With bargains and exchange of commodities, aids to memory must surely have come in; and when we think of the men of the Neolithic age as traders, we can hardly be wrong in also believing them to have taken the next step in civilization which trade seems to bring with it--the invention of some system of mnemonics. [Sidenote: Tallies.] No man or woman would be likely to trust their bargaining to another without giving him some little token or pledge by way of safeguard against mistake or forgetfulness. It would be a very trifling, transitory thing at first; something in the nature of a tally, or a succession of knots or woven threads in a garment, allied to the knot which we tie on our handkerchief overnight to make us remember something in the morning. It seems hardly worthy of notice, and yet the invention of that artificial aid to memory is the germ of writing, the little seed from which such great things have come. Unfortunately, our discoveries of stone-age relics have not yet furnished us with any suggestion as to how the men of that epoch arranged and carried out the aids to memory they probably had; but we can trace the process of invention among still extant races.