necessary for inventors, and other classes of the poor and helpless, to cry out of their wrongs. ye "Ye looked for much, and lo, it came to little; and when brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house." (Haggai i. 9.) "Churlish souls stint their contributions to the ministry and missionary operations, and call such saving good economy; little do they dream that they are thus impoverishing themselves. Their excuse is that they must care for their own families, and they forget that to neglect the house of God is the sure way to bring ruin upon their own houses. Our God has a method in Providence, by which He can succeed our endeavours beyond our expectation, or can defeat our plans to our confusion and dismay; by a turn of His hand He can steer our vessel in a profitable channel, or run it aground in poverty and bankruptcy. It is the teaching of Scripture that the Lord enriches the liberal, and leaves the miserly to find out that withholding tendeth to poverty. In a very wide sphere of observation, I have noticed that the most generous Christians of my acquaintance have been always the most happy, and almost invariably the most prosperous. I have seen the liberal giver rise to wealth of which he never dreamed; and I have as often seen the mean, ungenerous churl descend to poverty by the very parsimony by which he thought to rise. Men trust good stewards with larger and larger snms, and so it frequently is with the Lord; He gives by cartloads to those who give by bushels. Where wealth is not bestowed, the Lord makes the little much, by the contentment which the sanctified heart feels in a portion of which the tithe has been dedicated to the Lord. Selfishness looks first at home, but godliness seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; yet in the long run, selfishness is loss, and godliness is great gain. It needs faith to act towards our God with an open hand, but surely He deserves it of us; and all that we can do is a very poor acknowledgment of our amazing indebtedness to His goodness." ("Morning by Morning," October 26.) And again, "He that watereth shall be watered also himself" (Proverbs xi. 25). "We are here taught the great lesson, that to get, we must give; that to accumulate, we must scatter; that to make ourselves happy, we must make others happy; that to become spiritually vigorous, we must seek the spiritual good of others. In watering others, we are ourselves watered." (Ibid., August 21st.) Now to take this down by the short-hand method the following operations would be performed. The first person in the second row would, with his right hand, touch the first person in the front row on the left shoulder, when the person touched would immediately write on his paper. Ye He would next write immediately after it looked, so that on the paper of the first person in the front row there would be written the words Ye looked. But immediately after the first person in the front row had been touched, the second person in the front row would be touched by the person behind him. And he would immediately write on his paper the word looked, and then he would put before it the word ye, and the word for after it, so that on his paper there would be the words Ye looked for. Immediately after the second person in the front row had been touched, the third person in the front row would be touched by the person behind him, and he would immediately write on his paper the word for. He would then write before it the word looked, and after it the word much, so that on the paper of the third person in the front row there would be written the words looked for much. When the second row came in front, and began to write the words read out by the row which had written, the following would be the words which would be found on the papers. The first person's paper would have the words The 2nd...... The 3rd The 4th Ye looked Ye looked for .....looked for much ..for much and ....much and lo .it came to ..little and when ...and when ye ..when ye brought ..ye brought it brought it home ..it home I ..home I did .I did blow ...did blow upon ..blow upon it upon it Why .it Why saith Why saith the The marks (o o o) would mean that the orator was not speaking when the writer was touched. The marks (house. o Churlish) would mean that the orator had come to the end of a sentence after the word house. It of course will be evident that no harm will be done if the front row are touched faster by the second row than the rate at which the words are spoken by the orator. This would only lead to some long words being repeated twice or even thrice in the writing of the front row. Such a thing is not a serious evil. But care must be taken that the front row are not touched at a slower rate by the second row than the rate at which the words are spoken by the orator. This would be a serious evil, because it would cause some words to be omitted. The above method will enable each writer to write with ease and comfort, and even to write slowly. And it will not be necessary for the writers to write short-hand at all. They can easily write long-hand. For, however rapidly an orator speaks, it is the easiest thing possible for a person to take down, in good, round, legible long-hand every fifteenth word that he speaks. Some will say, "This is all very fine, but what a dreadful expense it will necessitate!" My reply is-it will be expensive, but not so expensive as the present system by a long, long way. The Times employs a corps of sixteen short-hand writers for the gallery of the House of Commons. Suppose that every other leading London paper employs only three, there must be near a hundred short-hand reporters for the House of Commons alone. Compare one hundred with thirty! When Mr. Shaw, of Madagascar celebrity, appeared at Exeter Hall, there were forty short-hand reporters in the reporters' gallery. Compare forty with thirty. And my system is capable of being written efficiently by a much smaller number than thirty. For instance, the second row might consist of only five persons. Because one man could touch three men in the front row in succession, without moving out of his place. This arrangement would reduce the number required from twenty to thirty. And machinery might easily be used for doing the work of the second row -ie, for touching the front row. An axle with radial arms might, by revolving, touch the persons in the front row, one after another. Probably, nine men in the front row, and three behind them, might, without machinery, be found sufficient. And if machinery were used, nine men in the front row, and one to turn the wheel, would probably be found enough. And if the writers wrote short-hand of any kind, then four in the front row and two behind might probably (without any machinery) be found sufficient. The railway system is a much more perfect method of locomotion than the stage-coach system. But while the stage-coach system cost only from £100 to £800 a mile, railways cost from £10,000 to £39,000 a mile. And some entire railways have cost the almost fabulous sum of one million pounds sterling per mile. The stage-coach system was apparently cheaper than the railway system, yet it was, in reality, immensely dearer than that system. For, besides the fact that each passenger by the stage-coach system had to pay much more than each railway passenger, he was carried to his destination much more slowly, and much less comfortably than the railway passenger is carried. The stage-coach system required little capital, but it was intolerably inefficient. The railway system requires immense capital, but it is very efficient. Now the system of shorthand which I have been proposing requires a larger capital (ie., a larger number of men to work it) than the old systems. But I hold that it is perfectly efficient, as it reveals a method by which the speech of the most rapid speaker may, with the very greatest ease, be taken down, exactly as it is spoken. No existing system can do this, or anything like this, as can be proved by referring to the pages of Anderson. Yet confessedly inefficient as the old systems of shorthand have been, professorial chairs have been established to teach them, not only in such advanced places as Germany, but even in such backward countries as Spain. By royal ordinance in 1802, a chair for short-hand was established at Madrid, and the first professor named was Marti, the translator of Taylor's short-hand. Xaramillo was a pupil of Marti's (Anderson, 290). Every sessions court throughout the country ought to have a short-hand organisation. Court business would then be transacted five or six times quicker than it is at present, with more exactness, and with far greater comfort to all concerned. It seems that a colonial professor in a college, either in the East or in the West Indies, has recently published a new system of short-hand of an entirely novel character. The English alphabet is printed many times on a page of paper. And short-hand is written by the writer drawing his pen or his pencil through the required letter in each set of alphabets successively. The alphabet is printed about two hundred and thirty times on a page. Supposing the shorthand writer wanted by this method to write the word liberality, he would draw his pen or his pencil through / in the first set of alphabets, then through i in the second set, through b in the third set, a set would next be passed over to represent the letter e, the pen or the pencil would thereafter be drawn through in the fifth set, through a in the sixth set, through in the seventh set, through in the eighth, through in the ninth, and through y in the tenth set. There are affixes such as ty and ity, so that when the pencil is drawn through them there is a very considerable saving in time. Specimens of four short-hand sheets of this colonial professor's system are at present in my possession. These four, as the system has been published, I am at liberty to criticise. Sheet No. I is frightfully complex. It consists of a sheet, folio size, with the following printed sixteen times upon it. O. 1 2 3 4 b6c 8 d 10 h i 13 14 15 16 17 18 1 m 21 0 23 p r 26 t 28 wa b c d fghijklmnopqrstuv w x y z & ago all are as at been but by call can come could did do done each e-very first for from give-n go God good great had have he how if in is it lord me Mr. more much my no nor not of on one or |