THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT 



to help him with figures of speech, and for 

 these the world and his own experience offer 

 an inexhaustible source. So it is possible 

 for men of the widest mental and moral 

 divergence to use the same language and yet 

 show as vast a difference in their verbal 

 efflorescence as a sunflower and a lily of the 

 valley, which draw from the same soil and 

 air the raw material with which each petals 

 forth its individuality. 



Yet all this is only a fraction of the far- 

 reaching results attained by means of lan- 

 guage and printing-presses, which are per- 

 haps the most valuable of all of man's inven- 

 tions. By their agencies, man has abolished 

 the thick partitions of the centuries between 

 the past and the present and looked into the 

 very hearts of his brothers who lived thou- 

 sands of years ago. Through the printed 

 page, more wonderful than any enchanted 

 mirror of fairyland, we see the never-ending 

 pageant of the world pass, Jew and Gentile, 

 bond and free, heroes, villains, warriors, 

 martyrs, saints, seers, and prophets, each, 

 through the printed page, bequeathing an in- 



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