which appeared in 1831, by the side of Pitman's Phonography of 1873, and Tachygraphy of 1871, will show how closely they are allied.

Let the reader here turn to page 32, and compare the alphabet of this system with these here presented.

The important feature of phonography is, that our present orthography needs a thorough remodeling; on this idea the system is founded. For thirty years have its advocates pressed its claims, and although it has proven equal, when fully mastered, to the demands of verbatim reporting, still it is as blind to the masses today as when first invented. Gigantic efforts have been made, openly and by insidious measures, to put it in place of our present orthography, with less prospect of success now than twenty years ago. If it was adapted to popular use, it has surely had time to demonstrate its practicability and to bestow its benedictions.

Phonography has three fundamentals which render its general introduction not only slow, but most improbable, if not quite impossible.

1. Its basis on a rigid elementary analysis of the sounds of the language, requiring as many letters as there are sounds.

2. Its unphilosophical alphabetic lines.

3. The difficulty of execution incident to those lines. Let us consider these briefly in their order. With regard to the sounds of the language, it is clear that long practice and study are necessary to so familiarize the writer with them, that, on the utterance of a word, all its elements at once array themselves in the mind with the rapidity of thought, as is imperative for purposes of short-hand writing. Besides, many persons have difficulty both in appreciating and in uttering the elemental sounds, the ear not being sufficiently accurate in their

discrimination. Speech appeals to the ear, while writing appeals to the eye; and to so construct writing that it can reach the eye only through the ear, is to render it difficult of acquisition, if not impossible, to a large proportion of the human race.

Again, it is certain that no one can ever acquire the same readiness in the use of twenty vowel characters that he can in the use of the five, a, e, i, o, u; besides, already so accustomed to these that they are a part of the mental furnishing, to attempt to set them aside, and to replace them by twenty others representing nice distinctions in pronunciation, is indeed a herculean task.

2. Its unphilosophical alphabetic lines. No alphabet based on the radii of the circle, with its various arcs, can be easy to write. The circle is the most difficult of all simple forms. It is astonishing that the modern inventors of short-hand should have overlooked the experience of all nations in the writing of long-hand, in which it is clear that the efforts to secure speed have developed the forms employed, away from the circle, into the arcs and axes of the inclined ellipse. No hand at rest can rapidly execute the circle, while all easy movements of the arm, hand, and fingers, resting on the paper, form the lines of ellipses. Is it not remarkable. that, after having based the alphabet on the circle, Pitman should say, in the "Reporter's Companion," "Theoretically, every line employed in phonography is a right line, or an arc of some circle? Practically, all light lines become, to the fluent writer, portions of ellipses. The most rapid continuous line that can be described is a flattened ellipse. The greater the velocity the flatter the arc."

3. The difficulty of execution incident to its unphilosophical alphabetic lines.

It may be safely affirmed that no alphabetic conception, having in view the writing of words, could be more unphilosophical, because, while long-hand, with its multitude of lines, is capable of expressing the longest words of the language by a continuous line, there are but three words in the language that can be written by means of phonography in an unbroken line, and these are A, I and O.

The method of writing words by a consonant outline with disconnected vowels, each of which must be represented by its distinctive dot or dash, and placed with exquisite care in its proper position by the side of the consonant line, requires far more thought, and is more tedious, than the writing, of long-hand.

And not only because the vowels cannot be written connected with each other, and with consonants, but because of their being mere dots and dashes, no contractions which may be applied to the consonant lines are applicable to them. Hence in the more rapid style of phonography the vowels are quite discarded. Again, the alternate shade and hair-lines of the phonographies are a great embarrassment to rapid writing, which the reporter can surmount only by discarding this feature, thus rendering his writing less legible. Another important difficulty in the execution of the phonographies lies in the fact that while the alphabetic lines slope in all directions, every other line is a heavy one, and to render the writing legible it must be thus written. In long-hand, the pen is carried up and down in alternate lines in the same general slope, with an occasional horizontal movement to the right, while in phonography

there is no uniformity in movement, no law of motion, the hand constantly flying to all the cardinal points, obliged in all these different directions to produce light and heavy lines in about equal number.

This grand unphilosophical defect in the arrangement, strength and direction of lines, not only produces most extravagant word forms, often extending obliquely upward or downward to extreme lengths, obliging the systems to resort to word signs to get rid of the damaging forms, but renders phonography the most difficult of all writing to execute.

Thus encumbered, phonography has not, and never can, become a common medium of writing, for to secure its measure of rapidity it burdens both the mind and the hand. Said a practical reporter of culture: "I have studied it more than I have everything else."

Said a young man of ability: "I have written phonography three years, and can accomplish one hundred and fifty words a minute, but I cannot read it."

Said Prof. Goldwin Smith, in a lecture to students at Cornell University: "It took me seven years to perfect myself in phonography."

A profound sense of the great difficulties of the present systems of short-hand, a few of which have been. enumerated, impressed by years of teaching the art, in three different methods, with a desire to see rapid writing placed on a philosophical and easy basis, and adapted to general use as well as to reporting, has resulted in the following system.

Its alphabet represents the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet, each expressed by a single line, which, being