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Oct.

7, 19151
that they are fighting
international righteousness a r e as free as ever toinsist that
their principles be accepted by their opponents and to exact guarantees
of good faith.
Theadvantage of t h e plan seemsto us to
be that a recalcitrantGovernmenthasperpetualopportunity
t o signlfyacceptance
of
the priceless principles at stake,andthat
the various elements of its people, both indivlduals and groups, have d e h i t e occasion to
brlng pressure to bear o n t h e n Government in
It is
earnest
favor of suchacceptance.
hope that some such plan, if carried out, would
tendto
givespeedy
victorytothe
rightwould tend t o thwart wrong motives and to
assist and reward right motives in every
country.
JULIA
WALES.
,
20.

MISQUOTATIONS.
TO

EDITOR
OF
SIR: May I ventureto add to Mr.
Shannons dictionary of misquotations a sin-

The Nation
teristic of theoraltransmission
of poetry.
H e h a s ailed to understand, and for an
familiar wordhe has substituted a familiar
one. as when, in the instance cited by
fessor Child from the ballad of The Gypsy
Laddie, they cast their glamourie owre her
is turned into they called their grandmother
over.
Is too bigg, after all, the choice of a
genius? It i s a matter of taste,and in a
matter of taste Mr. Eastman is likely to be
right.Yet
I must confess that
preferto
bigg as more poe,tic. more consistent with the
contextand n t h the emoi3ongiI atmosphere.
Again, if
writesabouttheseballads
of
the people, shouldnotonewriteaboutthe
popular o r traditional versions? But that,
of
course, Mr. Eastman
may
have
done
It
would be interesting t o know.
WALTER MORRISm T .
,
3.

THIil

Notes from- theCapital

gleexamplefromMaxEastmansEnjoyment of Poetry? It 1s a trifhng error, yet, as


a literary phenomenon, not wholly lacking in
ALEXANDER GRAI3AM BELL.
significance. Mr. Eastman is ascussingthe
popular ballad: by way of illustration,he
quotesthe whole of BonnleGeorge CampWhilebattle-lines
rn theEuropeanwar
bell, the second stanza in the following form: a r e doing theirfightmg on orders communihis auld
cated by telephone from airships, it is naturfu
al that the name of Alexander Graham Eel1
should be on the l i p s of every well-read
visitor to
Washington,
his career
having
My
lles
been so largely associated,with the transmismy
is
My
is
bigg.
sion of the human voice by wire andwith
my
aerial navigation.
Dr. Bell isthetypicalScotchmanin
aaAnd Mr. Eastman adds this comment: These
speech,
and
manner.
His broad
ballads of the people, though they derive from pearance.
the fingers of time a touch of perfection not face, framed In a mas8 of whitehair whlch
his brow and
their own. were none the less surely the work rises in a great shockabove
chin like
of Poets. They have a discrimination of emo- sta.nds o u t aroundhisJawsand
of a lion, preparesyou
tional atmosphere. an occasional poetic word theunbrokenmane
that adds piquancyto
used with exquisite regardtothat,
which fortherattlingburr
whateverhe says. He is a man whom you
proves the receiving mind.
would describe as big rather than large, and
MY
the
adjective
applies
to
everything
about
was the choice of a genius.
him-his
height, his shoulders, his hands,
It Would-be lnterestmg to knowwho that his carriage. I was going toaddhis
voice,
genius w-as. Hewas
n o t one of the com- but that might convey a falseimpression:
Posers or transmitters of thefourpopular
for,though hls lung-s are as leonine as his
versions or fragmentsprinted by Chld,
head, his long research
in the field of weal
these,wheretheyhavethephrase
at all, phenomena has cultivated
in
him
a soft
have My house is unbigged (A) or My mode of speakmg, with the most varied range
barn is to build (D-which is, of course, the of inflexions and an enunciation w h x h
as
meanmg). He was not the
edltor of a n y one clear as thestroke of a crystal clock. You
of the collections accessible to me, hewas
are n o t surpriEd. after conversing with him,
notCunningham,whoquotes
Childs D; he to learn that he began his career as a teachwasneitherAlhngham
nor Motherwell,who
er of elocutlon and music, and that his first
read respectwely to bigg arid to blg. p h o ambibon w a s t o become a famous composer.
was he? Is it possible that he was Mr. EastIndeed, it was orig-inally fromhismusical
man himself?
studiesthathe
derived t h e SUggestlon of
Whoever he was, he seems to have quoted the telephone, f o r his analysis o the princifrommemory;inneitherphrasing
nor ar- ples underlying differences of pltch in the
rangement Is h1s version of t h e ballad pre- human voice led t o otherinvestigations
In
cisely like any that I know He repeats Al- phonetics, in thecourse
of which hecame
linghams mistake of Reaving-[robbing] her upon t h e discovery of Helmholtz that vowel
hair far Rivmg [tearing] her hair: but sounds could be reproduced by vibrating
otherwlse his version is no more like Alling- metal. Thequestionarose
at once m his
hams than it ishke
Motherwells. Appa- mind: If vowel sounds
can
be thusarrently, then, we have an illustration
of cor- tificially transmitted,
why
not
consonants
ruption In transmission no lessinteresting
And mth this began the methodical
thantheastorted
version of Henleys In- procession of tests which,reinforced by
victus quoted by Professor Gummere in
his coveries made by others in the same and
Populas Ballad fromthe
question-column related lines of inqumy, resulted in the
of a newspaper.Theinquirer,says
Dr. telephone, and
broughttheremotestends
Gummere, IS an educated person Mr. East- of theearth,to
all intents, ovlthin speaking
an distance of each other. In theconquest of
mans genius,however,
hasfalleninto
the air he has taken the same strides
errortypical of theuneducatedandcharacas in

435
theenterprises more closely llnked withhis
name. His experiments
have
been pretty
carefully protected from pubhc curiosity, but
apparently have proceeded upon t h e basis of
producing a burden-bearing &rigible kite
ratherthanthecigar-shaped
balloon or the
mechanical bird, which havecaptured
the
worlds fancy during the last
few years.
Naturally, the student of phonetics became
interested in the relief of deafness. His
lathed,
Alexander
Melvllle Bell, beginning
life as a professor of elocution, by degrees
evolved a system of universal speech, whereby anypersonwiththenormalequipment
of vocal organs, whether able t o hear or not,
could betaughttoproduce
at will every
varlety of sound and articulation of which
a human being is capable. This led directly
to the theory of a vlsible speech-that IS, the
possibility of enabling one person, with fair
eyesight and intelhgence, to read, fromthe
motions of the lips, tongue. teeth, and throat
of another.the words andsentenceswhich
these
organs
are
forming,
regardless
of
whether any sound is actually uttered or not.
Fromthis,again,
it wasbut
a stepto
a
system of auable speech by a person who Is
dumb,provided
o n l y that his muteness is
notduetotheabsence
of essentialorgans.
Alexander Graham Bell, as his fathers assistant, acquired not only his mastery of his
subject, but his enthusiasm as well, and ever
since coming to this country in 1870 has devoted time, thought, and meansmostgenerously to the improvement of the condition
of deaf mutes. He married a Miss Hubbard,
who hadlost
bothspeech
and hearing as
the sequel to an illness of her chlldhood, and
whobecame hismostsuccessful
pupil. SbF
IS able to carry on a conversation by studying the face of her companion, and malrlng
au&ble
responses
which
she
cannvt
hear
herself. Dr. Bell has weekly soclal gather- .
ings at hishouseduringthewinterseason,
at whichscientists,
inventors, explorers, literary men, and other persons who do things
come together to talk over whatever
new
andstrilung
in theirseveral
fields of endeavor;andone
of thefamihar
sights on
these occasions is Mrs. Bell listenlngto
a
speaker, elther-if he be a dlstantenunciator who keeps his face turned In her direction-by readmg his remarks with her
eyes,
or gettmgwhathe
says at second hand
through Its silent repetition by her husband
sitting at her side.
A recentphilanthropicenterprise
of Dr.
Bell was interrupted by the outbreak
of the
European
war
and
the
mutual
estrangement of the nationsengaged in It. H e h a s
t o induce our
been for some yearstrymg
Government t o promote an international
agreement on. a unlversal alphabet-that
1%
a unlon of all the peoples of the world in
the use of one series of letters representative
of soundswhlchshall
be thesameeverywhere, so that any person who knows hm
own written language can read and write
and
pronounce all otherwrlttenlanguages.not
necessarily understanding
them,
but
wlth
the abllity to convey the words toanother
person. A first step in thisprogramme, of
course, would be t h e estabhshment of a
uniform and fixed relation of visible symbols
to sounds in our English tongue, so that, f o r
instance, cough will n o t be pronounced
cow because plough is pronounced
plom. It is hoped that when the worlds
peace isfully restored, Dr. Bell wlll resume
this effort towards a better
nnderstandlng
among all mankind.
TATTLER.

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