248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



plest of their writings was still complicated. They had scruples 

 against giving it up, and were inculpable of sacrificing their tra- 

 ditions and the love of the mysterious to the conveniences of life. 

 After it had become the universal tool of commerce, writing 

 put itself at the service of writers and poets. Yet literature did 

 without the alphabet for several centuries. The oral met 1 d suf- 

 ficed for it, and verses and stories, in whatever dialect they were 

 composed, passed from mouth to mouth. But the discovery, once 

 launched upon the world, made a revolution in it. Suppress the 

 alphabet, and all would be changed in the history of the human 

 race. Three great religions, which have had a decisive influence 

 on its destiny, would have been smothered in their cradles if the 

 cursive writing had not served as a vehicle to carry them to dis- 

 tant points, and secure entrance for them. The Hebrews were 

 acquainted with letters, and had a current writing. They were 

 destined to be the people of one book. The law of the gospel 

 must be a written law. Mohammed was to write, the world was to 

 be governed by books, and these books were to make the fortune 

 of the alphabet used in writing them. The Latin Bible, as much 

 as the genius of Rome, carried the Latin alphabet into all western 

 Europe. The Greek liturgy imposed the Byzantine alphabet on 

 the Slavic peoples ; and if all Africa ever learns to write and read, 

 it will be indebted to the Koran for its knowledge of those arts. — 

 Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des 

 Deux Mo r des. 



TO TIE A ROPE OF SAND. 



Br AGNES L. CAETEK. 



MORE than twenty years ago I was one of a great company of 

 children who labored with wooden spade and pail on the 

 beach at Long Branch. Never a corps of sappers and miners 

 worked more industriously or more vainly. A mighty force, un- 

 hindered, or rather strengthened, by night and storm and winter, 

 worked behind us, not merely leveling at a touch our tiny forts 

 and mounds and trenches, but laughing at the utmost power and 

 skill of wiser heads and stronger hands. Like Old Age, in the 

 Norse fable, so persistent, so resistless, advances that mighty en- 

 gineer, whose molding shaped our continent. 



Is continent-making at an end ? Did you think, O builder of 

 hotel and cottage and esplanade, that Old Ocean had surrendered, 

 and was under bonds not to invade the strip of white sand which 

 borders man's territory ? 



When I plied my tiny spade in the Long Branch sands, a broad 

 beach stretched below the bluff, while, above, a generous strip, 



