OR STENOTYPOGRAPHY: A SYSTEM OF CONDENSED PRINTING, TOGETHER WITH THE ELEMENTS OF ALAGRAPHY OR BY HENRY H. BROWN Multum in Parvo. PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. BATTLE CREEK, MICH. HARVARD SEP 15 1887 L1 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1887, by HENRY H. BROWN, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. STENOTYPOGRAPHY. INTRODUCTORY. I' I. T was stated, some time since, in a current newspaper item, that a careful computation showed that the expense of printing the letter u in such words as favour, honour, colour, endeavour, etc., by the London Times establishment, considering the labor and material expended and the space the letter occupied at advertising rates, to be upwards of five hundred pounds, or twenty-five hundred dollars, per annum! It was further asserted that this paper had adopted the American method of spelling this class of words (limited to between fifty and sixty in number), but failing to meet with a general approval of the change by the literary public, had relapsed into the old orthog raphy, which is still retained by the English. When we consider the immense circulation of this journal, and its valuable advertising space, the truth of the statement appears altogether probable; and it has, at least, sufficient foundation in fact to serve as food for reflection. The burden of taxes for educational purposes in many States of our Union, is equal to that of the levy for all other purposes combined, and the total expense by the English-speaking people of the world is. enormous; yet more than half of this immense sum, to be computed by the hundreds of millions, is actually thrown away. Statistics show that the average attendance of students in our public schools is less than three years, and that it usually consumes two thirds of this period to acquire even a passable knowledge of English orthography! If in any other object of human endeavor it were conclusively shown that mankind were expending four or five times the necessary amount of effort, time, or money to accomplish some desired result, a speedy change of methods and existing appliances would quite certainly ensue. In the visual expression of thought by written or printed symbols, however, the world has been extremely conservative in its progress, and we are doubtless using to-day in our current Roman alphabet, many modified forms of the picture-writing invented in the dawn of Egyptian civilization, perhaps a hundred centuries ago. Developing slowly through the ages into a crude phonetic form, borrowed and adapted by the Phenicians, subsequently cultivated and refined by that wonderful people, the Greeks, and spread by Roman conquest throughout Western Europe, this alphabet has come to be our heritage, but so neglected and overgrown with multiplied errors and inconsistencies that they present a very serious obstacle to the acquisition of elementary knowledge. The necessary first steps in the pathway of learning are made so difficult, as to require years to accomplish, instead of the weeks or months only which would be necessary were these impediments removed, thereby condemning multitudes to illiteracy. If the advocates of phonetic spelling with |