A POSTAL INCIDENT.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IX, Issue 443, 3 January 1867, Page 1 (Supplement)

A POSTAL INCIDENT.

A Yankee from the rural districts went to a Post Office the other day, and presented a bank-note in payment for five-shillings’-worth of stamps. He was told that paper money was not received. The countryman thought the Post Office official mighty particular, so he went and obtained five-shillings’-worth of coppers. “Now,” said he, on returning to the office, and laying down his pile on the window of delivery, “I guess I can suit ye.” The man inside looked at tho display of coppers and coolly replied—- “ \V e never take more than fourptmee in copper at one time—it is not a legal tender above that sum.” The countryman looked at the composed official for tho space of a minute without ctirnng, and then belched out — “ Look here, you—ain’t you mighty kind o’ particular, for fellows locked up in such a jail as this ’ere ? You don’t take only fourpence of copper at a time, hey ? Well, then, s’pose you give mo a pcuuy’sworth of stamps, anyhow.” The official very politely cut him off a single stamp, and passed it out, for which the countryman laid down a penny. He was about to pass away, when tho latter cried out—- “ Look here, you, that ’ere’s one time. Now s’pose you give mo a penny’s-worth more on ’em.” The clerk was not slow in discovering that he had caught a Tartar. He turned back to the window and asked—--11 How many coppers have you got?” “ Well, only about fifty-eight of ’em. I had sixty when I begun.” “ Pass them in,” was the gruff reply. “Pass out your stamps fust, and then I will; but I reckon you won’t ketch me again.” The slumps were passed out, and the coppers handed over, when the countryman went off, saying—- “ I s’pose because a fellow holds office in a place like this, he thinks he’s smarter’n than all creation ; but I guess he larnt something that time from me.”—American Paper. THE HISTORY OP AN ALPHABET. fFrem an American paper.! The great distinction between barbarous and Cultivated man is the possession of a written language. The difference between the pictures by which savages strive to record their histories, and the complete alphabet of the civilised men is notices then between calls and speech. Hence tho invention of writing is tho first and greatest step in the progress of the race ; the one thing which makes all others possible. Fables without number nave seen neapeu up, cairn-wise, to the memory of the inventor of the nrt. oniv. nowever, hitting his monument and name. But. psscinnr nil Ip.v Tiy T ni’nnmv Vn rp. count the only historical instance of the invention of an alphabet.

None of our Indian tribes originally possessed an alphabet. Their nearest approach to it was an abbreviated system of picture-writing. When iiiiot- translatea the Bible into Mohegnus ho used the Soman “lohab-r, but had to resort to various artifices of accents, double letters, end so on, oven to approximate to the rc= quired variety o£ =o uadis. In the early French and Indian wars, 5 whit* r.riaor.ftr WSS captured OJ eviao Cherokeea with a letter in his possession. They fhroed bi~- tr. m.-id it to them. which lie did, as the event proved wrongly. Among the hearers was a youth who became strongly interested in the mere fact of and afterwards, while the majority of the tribe maintained that the "talking leaf" was a gift from the Great Spirit to the whits man, he showed the drift of his ideas by arguing that it was but a thing of the whits man's own making. Many years after, an accident confined him to his cabin, and ultimately rendered him a cripple for life. Deprived of other occupation, his thoughts reverted to the old problem. Grasping—and here was the great effort —at the possibility of associating a sign with a sound instead of with an object, he attempted to collect all the sounds of the Cherokee tongue. He must here have been much embarassed by his ignorance of any previous alphabetic scheme for recording as he went on: a difficulty rendered greater by the formidable number of sounds he had collected, nearly two hundred. The next step was to suit each sound with a visible sign: and for this he used (and the fact is most interesting) pictures of birds, beasts, and other objects, whose names, already known by the ear, prominently embodied the sounds he sought to record. It was the hieroglyph over again; the same step, so far, to the same end.

The exceeding cumbrousnesa of this Bystem, both from its extent, and the character of its signs, forced a reconsideration here. By a new classification he reduced the number of sounds to eighty-six. This he was enabled to do by a peculiarity in the Cherokee verbiage, namely that every syllable, consequently every word, enus with a vowel. He really, therefore, had but to enumerate and classify the syllables, when a sign for each one would complete the task. No distinction into vowels and consonants would be required, for each letter would contain both in one. Such an alphabet, though more cumbrous at first than a literal one, would spell with far less complexity. Eliot’s Bible shows words of thirty and thirty-five letters; the longest I have noted in this alphabet is fourteen, (that is, a word of fourteen syllables.) His next step was to discard his pictures and substitute arbitrary and simpler signs. This was a bolder stroke than was made by any nation of the old world, for all of their alphabets are borrowed mainly one from another, or ultimately are but corruptions of the pictures which were in each case the first step. Discarding pictorial representations entirely, he formed a set of arbitrary characters, his only object being to make them as dissimilar as possible. Here he was possibly aided by having some printed matter before him, for about a dozen of his letters are identical in shape with certain Komau capitals, though that ha could not read is shown by his affixing different powers to them. For instance, the character M has tho sound of Lu, and the S that of Thu, and so on. It is not certain that any of our small letters were copied. Other of hia signs would seem, were it possible, to be taken from the Greek; a few may be matched from the Uuss, and the figure 4 occupies a distinguished position. But tho great mass of the signs are not found in any other alphabet, albeit some carry the appearance of beiug formed by tiie reverting, flourishing, or mutilating of signs apparently familiar. Of tho original eliaraoters, most aro tolerably compact, and not unnecessarily complicated j while a few are really beautiful. Their general appearance, viewed on a printed page, is | quite prepossessing.

As yet our hero had no pen, but made his letters on bark with a nail. He now (about 1825) obtained pea and paper from a trader, and reserved the pen as a pattern to make others by. His ink he made from barks. And his daughter, his first pupil, was now placed under tuition. But his retirement, his reserve concerning his occupation, had attracted the attention of Ins fellows. As the first printer of the old world was accused of using magical arts, so was the first writer of the new. He was shunned as dangerous, even the neighborhood of his cabin was avoided, and it would have fared hard with him had not his well-known inoffensive nature delayed the accusation until ho could justify his doings by their iruits.

In 1826 be summoned tbe chiefs of th* nation, and carefully disclaiming all supernatural assistance, explained the mystery as far as he could. They remained incredulous ; bis daughter was colled: he went oat of hearing while she wrote from dictation ; returning he read and she retired. The chiefs were astonished hut not satis* lied. He then proposed to take several

youths under his tuition, and impart to

them the great mystery, riot without a lingering snapieion of rwcro'Dxanoj, the proposal was agreed to. Month after month passed : the anxiety of the trios increased day by day; and when at length the day of examination was snnounced, the excitement rose to the highest pilch possible among Indians. The various youths were separaUil from their muster and from each other, and watched w.tn t.,e most scrupulous care. They were racuhcd ro write to each other. to reply, to read consecutively the same writing, and

ia ebsrt every possible test was applied, fe«t only to the entire conviction of all j«« after, in IS2S, tbs United 1 fliotra Guvcrnujijni. had a fount of types of 1 this alphabet cast, which ore used iu print- ■ isg iiieirspspw, "ThsThisnii," Several - boots, mostly religious, have been printed 1 in it; and one, tbs Now Testament, now ‘ lit: before ms. i-rem an inspection of , this, it appears that only ons series cf ] wrrr.eier- «•» designed, fer the eepitals : are of Jthe same shape, differing only in < gks. Tils isaes read iron* left to right, a; 1 with Us. The surahcFS before the verses ; •»» our own Arabic signs, though this j saast bs attributed to the missionaries, for j “ee-quo-lah (such was our Indian hero’s . same. his English one George Guess) i completed his invention by adding a set < of drlieid Our yffli merks cf - punctuation also appear, probably intro* ] auced from the same source. ] See-quo-lah refused to accept Christianity, and it is said that when the New ’ Testament was translated into his language ' he expressed himself as sorry that he had g •o far assisted the introduction of the new ] religion by rendering possible the produc- < Hon of the book. He accompanied his < tribe in their forced removal from Georgia 1 to Arkansas. In 1842 he removed into ! Northern Mexico, where, at San Francis- j co, he died August, 1843, aged 78. ,