like ours in the old Squire's district, particularly where many of
them "don't know what they are in the world for," and have difficulty in
deciding on a vocation in life.

At that time there was much being said about a Universal Language. As
there are fifty or more diverse languages, spoken by mankind, to say
nothing of hundreds of different dialects, and as people now travel
freely to all parts of the earth, the advantages of one common language
for all nations are apparent to all who reflect on the subject. At
present, months and years of our short lives are spent learning foreign
languages. A complete education demands that the American whose mother
tongue is the English, must learn French, German, Spanish and Italian,
to say nothing of the more difficult languages of eastern Europe and the
Orient. Otherwise the traveler, without an interpreter, cannot make
himself understood, and do business outside his own country.

The want of a common means of communication therefore has long been
recognized; and about that time some one had invented a somewhat
imperfect method of universal speech, with the idea of having everybody
learn it, and so be able to converse with the inhabitants of all lands
without the well-nigh impossible task of learning five, or ten, or fifty
different languages.

The idea impressed everybody as a good one, and enjoyed a considerable
popularity for a time. But practically this was soon found to be a
clumsy and inadequate form of speech, also that many other drawbacks
attended its adoption.

But the main idea held good; and since that time Volapuk, Bolak,
Esperanto and Ido have appeared, but without meeting with great success.
The same disadvantages attend them, each and all.

In thinking the matter over and talking of it, one night at the old
Squire's, that winter, Master Pierson hit on the best, most practical
plan for a universal language which I have ever heard put forward.
"Latin is the foundation of all the modern languages of Christendom," he
said. "Or if not the foundation, it enters largely into all of them.
Law, theology, medicine and philosophy are dependent on Latin for their
descriptive terms. Without Latin words, modern science would be a jargon
which couldn't be taught at all. Without Latin, the English language,
itself, would relapse to the crude, primitive Saxon speech of our
ancestors. No one can claim to be well educated till he has studied
Latin.

"Now as we have need to l