Project Gutenberg's Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Books and Printing; a Treasury for Typophiles Author: Various Editor: Paul A. Bennett Release Date: November 12, 2020 [EBook #63730] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND PRINTING *** Produced by Tim Lindell, Stephen Rowland, Lis, Gen Knit, Andrés Galia TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: There are some characters quoted in the text that cannot be reproduced in the text version of the book. The sign ſ represents the ancient long s; the sign [ct] represents the ct ligature and the sign [ffi] represents the ffi ligature. A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept. Not all the font families used for the different articles included in the book were availabe for the HTML version. The font families that could be used for the transcription are Times New Roman, Gill Sans, Garamond, Bodoni MT (instead of Bodoni Book), Baskerville, Centaur, Perpetua and Bell. Most of the currently available browsers are compatible with those fonts. However, it is not certain that the currently available hand-held devices would be able to reproduce the text with those fonts. Punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected. Nevertheless, there are some portions where the author quotes text written in ancient style in which the punctuation rules applicable nowadays were not followed. Those have been left unchanged. FORUM BOOKS This ebook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders 20th Anniversary. BOOKS AND PRINTING A TREASURY FOR TYPOPHILES edited by Paul A. Bennett Forum Books THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK A FORUM BOOK Published by The World Publishing Company 2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio Revised Edition First Forum printing February 1963 Copyright 1951 by The World Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper or magazine. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 52-612 Printed in the United States of America. WP263 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful to many friends who have helped in the preparation of material for this book, and have freely granted permission to reprint their brain children. To the Typophiles of New York, and to the individual authors in their series of Chap Books, I am indebted for including: T. M. Cleland's Harsh Words; W. A. Dwiggins' celebrated "Investigation Into the Physical Properties of Books," first published for the Society of Calligraphers and included in Mss. by WAD; Evelyn Harter's Printers As Men of the World; and Lawrence C. Wroth's "First Work With American Types," from Typographic Heritage. To the editors of The Colophon, and the three authors, I am indebted for reprinting the essays of Earnest Elmo Calkins on "The Book and Job Print," Ruth S. Granniss on "Colophons" and Sir Francis Meynell's "Some Collectors Read." To the individual authors, the editors of The Publishers' Weekly and its publisher, R. R. Bowker Company, I am indebted for permission to include W. A. Dwiggins' "Twenty Years After," the sequel to his "Investigation"; excerpts from two articles by Robert Josephy; and Will Ransom's introduction from his Private Presses and Their Books. To Beatrice Warde, who has graciously permitted reprinting her classic "Printing Should Be Invisible." I appreciate greatly the counsel of the good friends who made possible the symposium on "The Anatomy of the Book": Peter Beilenson, Joseph Blumenthal, P. J. Conkwright, Morris Colman, Milton Glick and Evelyn Harter, William Dana Orcutt, Ernst Reichl, Carl Purington Rollins, Bruce Rogers and Arthur W. Rushmore. To Mergenthaler Linotype Company I am indebted for reprinting the text of the "Anatomy," now slightly revised, from The Manual of Linotype Typography. To both authors and their publisher, William E. Rudge's Sons, I am indebted for including the extracts from Bruce Rogers' Paragraphs on Printing and Merle Armitage's Notes on Modern Printing. To George Macy, and the directors of the Limited Editions Club, I am indebted for reprinting Porter Garnett's prize- winning essay, "The Ideal Book." And also for the illustration of the punch-cutting machine (from The Dolphin, No. 2) to accompany Carl Purington Rollins' essay, "American Type Designers and Their Work," for which permission to reprint was granted by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Chicago. To my good friend, James Shand, publisher of Alphabet and Image in London, I am indebted for including his account of George Bernard Shaw's relations with his printer (first published in A & I No. 8), and for assistance in securing electrotypes of the illustrations. To Oscar Ogg and the editors of The American Artist I owe thanks for reprinting his "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its illustrations. To Edwin Grabhorn I am indebted for including "The Fine Art of Printing," his address to the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco. I particularly appreciate the assistance of the late Otto Ege, Mrs. Anne Lyon Haight and Lawrence C. Wroth in revising their essays for publication here, and the thoughtfulness of Robert Josephy, Will Ransom and Arthur W. Rushmore in writing postscripts to enhance their essays. I am thankful to Mrs. Caroline Anderson of Los Angeles; my colleague Jackson Burke at Linotype; to Christopher Morley of Roslyn, L. I., and Arthur W. Rushmore of Madison, N. J., for valuable suggestions and help in research. For assistance in securing illustrative material I am indebted to my Typophile friends: John Archer, A. Burton Carnes, Lester Douglas, George L. McKay and William Reydel. To Fred Anthoensen of Portland, Maine, I am thankful for help in securing electrotypes to illustrate two articles. The publisher, and I as editor, acknowledge our appreciation to the authors of the other essays included, and to their editors and publishers, for permission to reprint this valuable material, for which detailed mention of copyright and publication date is printed elsewhere. And I hope my apologies may be accepted, should there be inadvertent omission of appreciation to the numerous other individuals who have so generously assisted me in preparing this book for the printer. P.A.B. CONTENTS BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION Page ix OTTO F. EGE. The Story of the Alphabet 3 LANCELOT HOGBEN. Printing, Paper and Playing Cards 15 RUTH S. GRANNISS. Colophons 31 EDWIN ELIOTT WILLOUGHBY. Printers' Marks 45 A. F. JOHNSON. Title Pages: Their Forms and Development 52 LAWRENCE C. WROTH. The First Work with American Types 65 RONALD B. MCKERROW. Typographic Debut 78 EDWARD ROWE MORES. Metal-Flowers 83 JAMES WATSON. The History of the Invention and Progress of the Mysterious Art of Printing &c. 85 EVELYN HARTER. Printers As Men of the World 88 ANNE LYON HAIGHT. Are Women the Natural Enemies of Books? 103 BEATRICE WARDE. Printing Should Be Invisible 109 PORTER GARNETT. The Ideal Book 115 W. A. DWIGGINS. Extracts from an Investigation into the Physical Properties of Books 129 W. A. DWIGGINS. Twenty Years After 145 DESMOND FLOWER. The Publisher and the Typographer 153 WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT, BRUCE ROGERS, CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS, JOSEPH BLUMENTHAL, P. J. CONKWRIGHT, ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE, MILTON GLICK, MORRIS COLMAN, EVELYN HARTER, PETER BEILENSON, and ERNST REICHL. The Anatomy of the Book: A Symposium 160 ROBERT JOSEPHY. Trade Bookmaking: Complaint in Three Dimensions 169 WILL RANSOM. What Is a Private Press? 175 ALFRED W. POLLARD. The Trained Printer and the Amateur: and the Pleasure of Small Books 182 SIR FRANCIS MEYNELL. Some Collectors Read 191 CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD. Printing for Love 212 ARTHUR W. RUSHMORE. The Fun and Fury of a Private Press: Some Voyages of The Golden Hind 220 EDWIN GRABHORN. The Fine Art of Printing 226 HOLBROOK JACKSON. The Typography of William Morris 233 STANLEY MORISON. First Principles of Typography 239 CARL PURINGTON ROLLINS. American Type Designers and Their Work 252 ERIC GILL. Typography 257 FREDERIC W. GOUDY. Types and Type Design 267 THEODORE LOW DE VINNE. The Old and the New: A Friendly Dispute between Juvenis & Senex 274 BRUCE ROGERS. Paragraphs on Printing 281 PAUL A. BENNETT. B.R.—Adventurer with Type Ornament 290 DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE. Some Tendencies in Modern Typography 306 PETER BEILENSON. The Amateur Printer: His Pleasures and His Duties 313 T. M. CLELAND. Harsh Words 321 OSCAR OGG. A Comparison of Calligraphy & Lettering 337 ALDOUS HUXLEY. Typography for the Twentieth-Century Reader 344 MERLE ARMITAGE. Notes on Modern Printing 350 JOHN T. WINTERICH. Benjamin Franklin: Printer and Publisher 352 JOHN T. WINTERICH. Benjamin Franklin: Printer and Publisher 352 EARNEST ELMO CALKINS. The Book & Job Print 368 JAMES SHAND. Author and Printer: G.B.S. and R.&R.C.: 1898-1948 381 PAUL A. BENNETT. On Type Faces for Books 402 PAUL A. BENNETT. Notes on the Type Faces Used in This Book 411 Index 421 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION Labeling these observations "introductory" isn't to confuse the purist. He knows that the terms preface, foreword and introduction become mixed frequently, he doesn't like it and he much prefers retaining the proper distinctions. "An introduction," he will insist, "should be solely concerned with the subject of the book, and introduce or supplement its text. And the preface or foreword should properly deal with the book's purpose, and define its limitation and scope. Let's keep things that way." Unfortunately, there isn't one term that covers comment which flows from one division to the other in a miscellany like this. At times—and at the risk of editorial modesty—I may seem something of a typographic barker, singing the praises of certain essays and pointing up different attractions. At others, the text will be supplemented with an explanatory note, or amplified to bring it up to date, as in the Josephy, Ransom and Rushmore articles. It amounts to an assist in getting back to purpose: that of informing on matters typographic, and on books, their printing and some of the fascinating steps along the way. In selecting material of appeal to the collector, printer, typographer and student, I have not overlooked the professional curiosity of editors and technicians. That's the thinking behind the inclusion of extracts from McKerrow and Mores and Watson, among other scholarly contributions. Where there was a choice, the preference was for the author with a point of view and the ability to express it interestingly. Four articles indicate this approach. "Printing, Paper and Playing Cards," the brilliant survey of Lancelot Hogben, illumines the birth and spread of writing and printing as nothing else I know. Otto Ege's brief account of the development of our alphabet, with its memorable letter-diagrams, has a different, not less valuable appeal, as does Oscar Ogg's comparison of "Lettering and Calligraphy," with its specimens of his own distinguished hand. And in "Printers As Men of the World," Evelyn Harter writes of a number of great printers as men of intellect, at home in the world of ideas. Her stimulating text suggests the compensation of looking at the background of printing in relation to world events. There was no preconceived attitude to consider in evaluating the essays included: no restriction by country of origin; no fixation about the traditional or modern in typographic approach; no desire to slant, or plant, ideas; no intent other than to select much of the best writing in English by authors of substance. That the gathering may provide riches to be added to "the savings account of your memory" is my hope. In a quite real sense, the experience has been something like spending many long weekends with friends in good, solid talk—some of it controversial, much of it illuminating and informing. The re-reading has not only opened "doors and windows for a welcome flood" of ideas, it has suggested new trails and made for valuable comparisons of favorites first met with years ago. It has been difficult to resist the temptation to include more essays of historic and technical appeal to typographers and printers. Many of the present generation, I presume, may not know De Vinne's authoritative account of the development of the American Point System, which occurred in the late eighties and is detailed at length in his Plain Printing Types; or the invaluable Meynell and Morison essay on "Printer's Flowers and Arabesques," with its fascinating reproductions, from The Fleuron. I have omitted these two with reluctance, and have used the space they would occupy for a half-dozen shorter essays not less worthy in themselves, but on different topics. Since space was limited, I needed to be. I would have welcomed the opportunity to include additional essays by D. B. Updike, whose incomparable Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use; In the Day's Work, and Some Aspects of Printing: Old and New, and other writings on typography should not be missed; by W. A. Dwiggins, the distinguished American letter artist and designer, who writes as well as he draws; and by Holbrook Jackson, the great English critic, literary historian and essayist, whose Anatomy of Bibliomania, Fear of Books and Printing of Books are required reading. There are other favorites omitted too, for unlike Jackson's remark about the house of books, "There are many mansions and room for all trades, whims, and even fads"—this book could comfortably hold no more. It has not seemed desirable, as it would be possible, to eliminate a degree of duplication in part among some of the essays. That would have required an amount of editorial surgery and revision unfair to the authors concerned. More importantly, it would have assumed that every reader would read every essay—hardly an attainable ideal. Nor has any documentation been attempted to reconcile opposing viewpoints—that of A. W. Pollard and Holbrook Jackson, for instance, in respect to William Morris as printer and typographer. Happy will that reader be who finds this and other instances sufficiently provocative to embark upon further research of his own. And while it is easier to come upon material in a collection such as this than to track down each item individually, much of the fun of the search is missing, along with the memorable thrills of discoveries in scattered places. There's much gold yet to be found by even moderate digging. The greatest area for argument is that within the opposing views of the modern and traditional approach to book design. It is unrealistic to oppose the concept that contemporary typography should reflect some of the differences that mark our time from other epochs. Defining distinctions and relating them precisely to the arts of the book is something else again. In his eloquent Harsh Words, T. M. Cleland decries the restless craving for something new. "This poison is aggravated in printing and typography," he insists, "by the fact that of all the arts it is, by its very nature and purpose, the most conventional. If it is an art at all, it is an art to serve another art. It is good only so far as it serves well and not on any account good for any other reason. "It is not the business of type and printing to show off, and when, as it so frequently does, it engages in exhibitionistic antics of its own, it is just a bad servant.... Typography, I repeat, is a servant—the servant of thought and language to which it gives visible existence. When there are new ways of thinking and a new language, it will be time enough for a new typography." The modern designer disagrees. He believes books can be freshened, made more appealing to eye and hand, and more inviting to read, just as product-packaging has benefited by the imaginative conceptions of skilled industrial designers. He concedes that books remain unsurpassed as a medium for transmitting thought to the reader's mind—and admits they do it best with a minimum of visual distraction. But, he asks, "is it not reasonable to remain open-minded and appraise the modern artist for what he may contribute? "Books, to be sure, are much more than packages to be styled for shelf attention and sparkle. Yet it seems reasonable to believe they also may benefit by traveling the road of visual appeal and design attractiveness, and that they may be assisted in typographic handling to convey the author's words with a minimum of reading effort." It isn't difficult to dismiss the modern approach and call it uninformed nonsense, but that doesn't lift the curtain and illumine the problem—or settle the continuing debate. I recall discussing modern typography some years ago with the late D. B. Updike, in his library at the Merrymount Press in Boston. A catalog from the Museum of Modern Art was at hand, designed by Herbert Bayer of Bauhaus fame. It looked strange in its all-lower-case typography, and seemed to slow reading because of that strangeness. To many it was the newest of the new ... perhaps it would institute a trend? Mr. Updike smiled, reached to a shelf for a book. It was printed more than a hundred years earlier in Paris and set throughout in lower-case. "So far as this had any influence, then or later," he remarked, "the experiment of Typographie Economique is as dead as Queen Anne." All of which points up Bertrand Russell's remarks, "On Being Modern Minded," in his recent Unpopular Essays[1]: "The desire to be contemporary is new only in degree," he declares, "it has existed to some extent in all previous periods that believed themselves to be progressive. "The Renaissance had a contempt for the Gothic centuries that had preceded it; the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries covered priceless mosaics with whitewash; the Romantic movement despised the age of the heroic couplet.... But in none of these former times was the contempt for the past nearly as complete as it is now. "From the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century men admired Roman antiquity; the Romantic movement revived the Middle Ages.... It is only since the 1914-18 war that it has become fashionable to ignore the past en bloc. "The belief that fashion alone should dominate opinion has great advantages. It makes thought unnecessary, and puts the highest intelligence within reach of everyone." Really thinking through the design potential not only seems the nub of the matter, but is basically sound typographically. Read Peter Beilenson attentively as he discusses the amateur printer and the development of a new style (page 313). "It is simple, but dull, to copy an old style," he points out. "It is hard, but exciting, to work out a new one. And while you are working at it, you must expect cynical observers to give your experiments the adjective 'wacky'; you must expect certain curious kinds of people to praise your work for the wrong reasons; and you must expect alternating moods of conceit and confusion. The proofs you gloat over at night will become commonplace by dawn.... "You will make misjudgments about the intelligence of ordinary readers. You will make mistakes of taste. You will find it too easy to get an effect by means of shock, and you will forget that any book, even a twenty-first-century book, must be a coherent unit. And you will often, since there are no highway markers for the explorer, feel lonely and discouraged and want to go back to the old familiar, well-traveled roads again.... "You can be subtle or bold, as you feel the urge ... you can advance your own work by looking to other fields of creation, enjoying and profiting by the experiments going on in them. You can feel yourself part of the whole forward- looking culture of today ... and if you do strike a vein with the least glitter of real gold in it, you will become rich indeed. For you will have become a creator in a new sense; your duty done as an amateur will be compensated with a twenty- four-carat satisfaction...." There's sense in that essay, as there is in the views of Merle Armitage, T. M. Cleland, Porter Garnett, Eric Gill, Frederic W. Goudy, Edwin Grabhorn, Robert Josephy, Aldous Huxley, Stanley Morison, Bruce Rogers, Carl Purington Rollins, D. B. Updike and Beatrice Warde on related topics. Admittedly, some are in opposition—yet that very quality of provocativeness may help in dispelling the fog. Whether we like it or not, the factor of competition affects the sale of books and their reading. Because so many elements compete for reading time, we frequently forget that they comprise the obvious: sports and the allure of the outdoors, newspapers and magazines, the theater and movies, radio and television, as well as social and family distractions. These elements are real, measurable to a degree, and materially affect the reading of books and consequently their sales. To the trade publisher and printer they affect the business future and may be considered opponents. To them, the question of whether the modern approach is more effective than the traditional is no academic matter. We have indicated the problem at length, though only in part, because of its consuming interest. For a comprehensive and sympathetic account of the modern view, see Books for Our Time. That illustrated record of the exhibition sponsored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (recently published by Oxford University Press), was designed and edited by Marshall Lee, and has essays by Merle Armitage, Herbert Bayer, John Begg, S. A. Jacobs, George Nelson and Ernst Reichl. It was Henry Watson Kent who sagely pointed out that the collector who has affection for the book's format is not necessarily indifferent to its soul—"the thought enshrined in it." And so, as the one may proudly discuss his Kelmscott, Doves or Ashendene items and their literary background, so the other—more knowledgeable in graphic arts lore—may find equal pleasure in his discoveries: John Winterich on Franklin as printer and publisher, possibly, or Sir Francis Meynell on collectors who also read, or James Shand's revealing account of G.B.S., his interest in typography and his relations with his printers. Instead of asking the fine press enthusiast to show his Doves Bible, his B. R. Pierrot, Nonesuch Dickens, or Grabhorn Leaves of Grass, the collector who reads about the making of books may get even more satisfaction in discussing his favorite essays or his most recent "find." That the one can be as satisfying as the other is quite definite in my mind. In fact, I am certain that the collector who learns to appreciate book-making details will find the greater pleasure: his knowledge becomes a part of him as prized items on his shelves never can; he will enjoy looking in books even more than looking at them. A concluding typographic note: Excepting for strictly type specimen material, and the degree of typographic expression attempted in Parts six and seven of The New Colophon for a different reason, I don't recall any other book set in such a variety of distinguished body types. Yet that seemed so natural and sensible an idea for this that it has been stimulating to work it out. Much of the detail and burden has fallen to the willing hands of Joseph Trautwein, the able designer responsible for this format, and the continuing interest of Joseph and Miriam Schwartz of Westcott and Thomson, the superior Philadelphia typesetters, whose wealth of typographic resources is evidenced in these pages. Some of the reasons for coupling specific essays and types are detailed in the final chapter, which includes also a brief specimen of each face with a note on its attribution. And finally, I want to salute William Targ, World's editor, for inviting me to put this miscellany together, and for his patience in watching the book develop. That hasn't proved anything like the challenging experience I envisioned, but instead became a spare-time, weekend pleasure I've enjoyed for months. Indirectly, of course, this is related to the great fraternity of book-makers and typophiles, rich in its friendships and international in scope, that I have been privileged to enjoy through the years. As I scan the contents again, I see not only the names of many good friends and the rewarding associations they bring to mind, but also some of their best writing. My chief regret is that there just wasn't room for more of it in this collection. But that's a different adventure—and possibly another book. PAUL A. BENNETT FOOTNOTES: Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950). [1] BOOKS AND PRINTING OTTO F. EGE The Story of the Alphabet ITS EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT Copyright 1921 by Norman T. A. Munder & Company. Reprinted by permission of the author. Do you know your A B C's? Each Letter Character Has a History and a Reason for Its Present Form. Have you Ever Questioned the Origin and Significance of the Alphabet? Our transition from barbarism to civilization can be attributed to the alphabet. Those great prehistoric discoveries and inventions such as the making of a fire, the use of tools, the wheel and the axle, and even our modern marvelous applications of steam and electricity pale into insignificance when compared with the power of the alphabet. Simple as it now appears after the accustomed use of ages, it can be accounted not only the most difficult, but also the most fruitful of all the achievements of the human intellect. Man lived by "bread alone" and without the alphabet untold ages, and with a practical alphabetic system not more than 3,000 years. So important and wonderful was this step deemed by those who lived nearer the time of its inception—in the time before the wonder of its extraordinary powers had been blunted by long possession and common use—that its invention, as well as that of writing, was invariably attributed to divine origin. Modern investigation always seeks sources other than mythological ones, and thus the science of ancient hand-writing, paleography, came into existence. In the last hundred and twenty-five years the writing of the ancient Egyptians, which was a "sealed book" for nearly twenty centuries, has been deciphered through the efforts of Champollion and Young; the mysterious cuneiform characters of ancient Assyria and Babylon have been interpreted by Grotofend and Rawlinson, and the "missing link" to connect our present alphabetic system to these ancient ones is being partly completed by Sir Arthur Evans, who is compiling and analyzing Cretan characters and pre-Phoenician writing. The story, however, will probably never be told in its entirety. The forms of our letters, with the exception of G, J, U, W, reached their full development two thousand years ago. The Roman letter was the parent of all the styles notwithstanding the diversity that has appeared in Europe since the beginning of the Christian era. With a little imagination it is not difficult to note the resemblance between similar letters of the old Roman capitals and those following that have been designated as script, Italic, Old English or black-letter, versal, uncial and an endless list of alphabet families. The desire for speed, and the influence of the tool, pen, reed, chisel, brush, were the determining factors in the change of form. Curiously enough instead of being archaic, the Roman alphabet, which is now 2,000 years old, is still the most useful because of its legibility, and also the most beautiful. We derived twenty-three of our letters from the Romans. They had taken probably eighteen of these from the Greeks about the fourth century B.C. and afterwards borrowed elsewhere or invented seven more. Instead of giving them names as the Greeks did, they simply called them by the sounds for which they stood: A (ah), B (bay). They introduced the curve wherever possible, whereas the early Greek letters were all angular—what an interesting analogy is evident in the architecture of those two peoples, the temple pediment and angularity of the Greeks as contrasted with the dome and arch of the Romans. The Greeks, in their contact with those great traders and "Yankees of ancient time," the Phoenicians, saw the value of their alphabetic writing and inaugurated its use about the time of the first Olympiad, 776 B.C. Three or four centuries before they gave it to the Romans the ancient Greeks found use for fifteen of the Phoenician letters and then conceived enough to round out an alphabet of twenty-four characters. The changes that took place in the shape of their letters can be attributed to their sense of order; the letters are balanced better and the parts better related. The Greeks were interested in the sound value only, not in the picture value of the symbol, and, therefore, they probably did not notice that A, for instance, had ever been a picture of the head of an ox and that it was now drawn upside down; and that the Phoenician name "Aleph" meant ox and that they mispronounced the sound in calling it "Alpha." The Romans borrowed from the Greeks and the Greeks had borrowed from the Phoenicians, but where did the Phoenicians obtain their letters? Did they invent them? To what extent were these letters influenced by earlier systems of writings as those employed by the Cretan, Assyrian and Egyptian civilizations? These are questions that probably will never be answered satisfactorily. Many arguments and theories are advanced. We can, however, trace back with certainty a number of our letters to the Phoenician alphabet of 1000 B.C. Beyond this all is, at present, a matter of conjecture. The Phoenician alphabet consisted of twenty-two pictures of familiar objects. These pictures were rudely and simply made, for writers and readers soon recognized the fundamental characteristics and all unnecessary details were eliminated. The great advance that can be credited to them is that they realized that a small number of sound-expressing characters, if well selected, are sufficient to express any word. Other races at this period had phonetic systems but they consisted of numerous symbols and cumbersome appendages of non-alphabetic characters—"eye pictures" side by side