ee ae THE ROMANCE OF THE ALPHABET RITING, or the expressing of ideas in set linear forms and symbols is the most ancient of all the arts, and is possibly the most far-reaching and important influence in the progress and development of mankind. Take from the world entirely the written word, the printed text, and what ensues?—a chaos such as existed in prehistoric times, a quiet dumbness that, stealing over the earth, estranges all people from mental intercourse with each other, unless with those in direct and personal contact. It would be like extracting the world’s memory and robbing the ages to come of the greatest heritage we have to offer; and yet, this other tongue of ours, “‘the written word,” has become such a fundamental part of our lives, has be- come so ordinary, that we may have ceased to recognize in it its unlimited importance. To follow the evolution of writing from its source, we must go away back to prehistoric man, to the savage, and from there trace its romance through the ages. In doing so we find that in the history of this art is also the source of the history of drawing and painting. The first forms and signs were symbolical, and their decorative qualities were recognized and developed later. The first three big civilizations of which historians tell us are “The Chinese’, ‘“The Western Asiatic’, and ‘“The Egyptian’, but it is to the last that we believe Europe is most indebted for the beginnings and subsequent growth of her civilization and culture. Long, long ago, like the fairy tales, when the history of man was in its embryo stage, away in the dark and silent past of tens of thousands of years ago, at which we can only peep and surmise, we believe that man had no written language, but we do know that the cavemen drew strange animals and symbols on the walls of their : [10]