178 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



quite sure, always, that if I really got the syllables 

 and wrote them down I should, with study, be 

 able to translate it all. It ought not to be half so 

 difficult as these hieroglyphic and cuneiform in- 

 scriptions on stone and brick buried in Assyrian 

 ruins for ten thousand years, more or less, and 

 now blithely put into modern speech by the 

 Egyptologists. 



The brook writes for me, too. On every placid 

 pool at the foot of some race of ripples it mixes 

 Morse-code dots and dashes with stenographic 

 curves, all written in white foam on the smooth 

 black mirror of the surface. Nor does it end 

 there, so eager it is to call its message to my no- 

 tice. Through the quiver of sun and shade it 

 sends heliograph flashes to me on the bank, mak- 

 ing again the dots and dashes of the Morse-code 

 alphabet, yet still with such lightning-like rapidity 

 that my dull eye fails to read. Only the foam 

 writing gives brief opportunity for one to study 

 the characters and decide what they mean. 

 Sometimes there it is not difficult to find words in 

 the Morse-code and phrases in the stenographic 

 curves though I have no more than a word or a 

 brief phrase before the current rearranges the 

 puzzle and I must begin all over again. I doubt 



