silver, which being scarcer than other metals are worth more. We learn from the paintings at Thebes, and from ancient history, that gold and silver were counted as wealth in early times. Abraham is said in the Book of Genesis (which you will read when you are older) to have been "very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold." The word "pecuniary," which is used in speaking of a man's riches, comes from the Latin word pecus, which means cattle, and shows that formerly a man's wealth was sometimes reckoned by the cattle he had. Another proof of the meaning that a word will hold.

And this reminds me that I have to tell you a little about speaking, writing, and counting.

X. Language.

In what way the wonderful gift of language came to man we do not know, and the wise of many ages have tried in vain to find out.

The same God who made the beautiful organs in man by which he can utter so many different sounds, gave him the power of creating names

for the things which he saw, and words for the thoughts which dwelt in his mind.

There are some words which we can account for, such as those which imitate sounds, as when we say the clock "ticks," or call the "cuckoo" and the "peewit" after the sound they make. But this explains only a portion of the vast number of words which make up a language, and which spring from roots deep down, too deep for us to track.

Man at first had very few words, and those were short ones, and in making known his thoughts to others, he used signs very much; "gesture-language," as it has been called. We do the same now; for in shaking the head to mean "no," in nodding it to mean "yes," and in shaking hands in proof that we are joined in friendship, we speak in gesture-language, and would have to do it a great deal if we were travelling in some country of which we did not know the language.

There are very few things that cannot be expressed by signs or gestures, and among the ancients entire plays were performed by persons

called pantomimes (which word means imitators of all things), who acted not by speaking, but wholly by mimicry.

A story is told of a king who was in Rome when Nero was emperor, and who, having seen the wonderful mimicry of a pantomime, begged him as a present, so that he might make use of him to have dealings with the nations whose languages he did not know. We have now so many words that we need use signs but very little, if at all.

Just as all the races of mankind are thought to have come from one family, so the different languages which they speak are thought to have flowed from one source.

There are three leading streams of language, and I shall have to quote a few hard names in telling you about them.

It was thought some years ago that Hebrew, which is the language in which the sacred books of the Jews (known to us as the Old Testament) are written, was the parent, so to speak, of all

other languages, but it has since been found through tracing words to their early forms that

1. Sanskrit, in which the sacred books of the Brahmans are written, and which was a spoken tongue in the time of Solomon and Alexander the Great, but which has been a "dead" or unspoken language for more than two thousand years;

Zend, in which the sacred books of the Parsees (or so-called fire-worshippers) are written;

Greek, the language of Greece;

Latin, the language of the ancient
Romans;

and nearly all the other dialects and languages of India and Europe, are children of the IndoEuropean, or Aryan family.

I told you something about these Aryans at page 9, and will add that through their language we know that they had learned "the arts of ploughing and making roads, of sewing and weaving, of building houses, and of counting as far as one hundred." The ties of father,

mother, brother, and sister, were hallowed among them, and they called upon God, who "is Light," by the name still heard in Christian churches and Indian temples. That name

is Deity. It comes from a very ancient word by which these people spoke of the sky, and which was afterwards applied to Him who dwells in the sky. For "beyond sun, and moon, and stars, and all which changes, and will change, was the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament of heaven." There man in every age has fixed the dwelling-place of God who is Light, and in whom is no darkness at all.

2. The second division of languages inIcludes the Hebrew; the Arabic, in which the Koran, the sacred book of the Mohammedans, is written; and the languages on the very old monuments of Phoenicia, Babylon, Assyria, and Carthage.

3. The third division includes the remaining languages of Asia, with the exception of the Chinese, which stands by itself as the only relic of the first