,,FE AND LABORS PITMAN B. RAKEk THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES 7 L X / f / . 0. BAKEK LAWYER , TEXAS Sir Isaac Pitman I His Life and Labors Illustrated Benn Pitman COPYRIGHT, 1902, KY BKNN PITMAN. CONTENTS. Chap. i. Sir Isaac Pitman; His Life and Labors Page 5 " 2. Isaac Pitman's Youthful Days " n " 3. The Father and Mother of the Pitman Family . . " 19 " 4. Melissa, the First-born " 29 " 5. The Start in Life as Schoolmaster ....... " 35 - " 6. Correction of the Comprehensive Bible " 41 7. First Glimpses of the New and True " 45 " 8. As Inventor " 53 .y " 9. Phonographic Evolution " 63 j " 10. Earl)' Promulgation of Phonography in England . " 75 *o ^ " ii. Isaac Pitman's Physical and Mental Traits ... " 87 v " 12. Happy is the Man Whose Joy in Life is His Daily Work " 95 " 13. Spending vs. Wrecking Life on a Thought . ... " 101 " 14. The Unsophisticated " 105 tftt ?* " 15. Marriage vs. A Mission " 117 " 16. Altruistic Labors ....'.. : . . " 123 j ~> "17. Phonographic Jubilee " 129 " 1 8. His Copyright " 139 y' ui " 19. Dr. Alexander John Ellis " 143 " 20. Alphabetic Reform " 155 / " 21. Unsettled Points in Pronunciation " 167 " 22. The Inventor's "Povert)-" " 175 " 23. Bell's Visible Speech . ... " 181 " 24. Decimal vs. Duodecimal Systems " 187 > " 25. His Last Attempt at Improvement " 191 448548 IN my observation of men in different conditions of life, I have not known another whose unremitting, long-continued and unselfish labors in furtherance of any educational, scientific, religious or social project, would parallel those of my brother Isaac Pitman. I have never known another who devoted the physical and mental energies of more than sixty years of life to the development of one idea. Such devotion, in a limited field of thought, might seem more deserving of censure than praise. But when it is borne in mind that it has taken more than six thousand years to give the world so useful, yet so imperfect, a scheme of alphabetic representation as the present script and typic Roman alphabets, and that the aim of Isaac Pitman was to correct and complete, in stenographic writing, longhand script, and printing, this great instrument of civilization, it may be conceded, what is self-evident to every phonetician and intelligent phonographer, that the development and practical application of the phonetic principle to the arts of writing and printing could only have attained their present comparative excellence and wide-spread 5 6 S/Jt ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AXD LABORS. acceptance in so brief a period by the entire devotion of one earnest mind, and the collaboration of tens of thousands of enthusiastic helpers. The project to which Isaac Pitman's life was devoted was so far-reaching in its aims and use, was one in- volving the discussion of so many thousand questions of detail, in which mind, eye, hand and habit were all concerned, and upon which every intelligent person might have a distinct opinion ; was one in which so many subtle, technical difficulties were in- volved of which only experts, after years of study, would be qualified to give an unprejudiced judgment, that it cannot be regarded other than singularly fortunate that one so fitted by study and habit should be found willing and able to give his life to the solution of the problem. That Isaac Pitman and his thousands of adherents, in the old and new world, have accomplished so much in the extension and use of a philosophic system of writing, is due to the admitted usefulness of the art, and to the intelligence and enthusiasm with which its admirers have labored. That they have, collectively, accomplished so little in inducing the English-speaking race to accept a more reasonable and philosophic script and typic repre- sentation of the language, is due to the fact that a new scheme antagonizes the settled thought and habits of people, and to the equally important fact that the reform deals with the representa- tion of human speech, which is, by each individual, necessarily regarded from a different standpoint; while the practical repre- sentation of this varying speech will be received with varying de- grees of respect and acceptation by each of the different organisms to which it appeals. What is more difficult of scientific analysis than human speech? What could be more evasive than an in- vestigation of the nature, and the classification and nomenclature of the labial, dental and guttural explodents, checks, hisses, buzz- es, hums and trills that, with vowels as connecting links, make our rapidly-moving vocal organism the means of expressing thought and feeling? And greatly is the difficulty increased when the attempt is made to picture to the eye each of these debatable sounds, in stenographic, in ordinary script, and in typic form, by the best available signs. It is not surprising, therefore,' though it is to be regretted, that what Isaac Pitman esteemed the more important part of his life's labor, should have passed into history as "a failure." Justin McCarty, in his "History of Our INTRODUCTORY. 7 Own Times," says, "On January 22, 1897, there died a man who had occupied his whole quiet, noble life with two theories, one of which was a complete success, and the other, up to this time, an absolute failure. All his life long he worked at the realization of his two theories, in the full belief that he was thereby doing some good for the human race. He remained faithful to his pur- pose through his life. His aim was to lighten the load of the heavily laden. Sir Isaac Pitman's system of Shorthand was a complete success. His principle of phonetic spelling has not ad- vanced one single step since he first tried to set it in movement." Our historian, who is a member of the British Parliament, is probably more familiar with matters of state than with educa- tional history. Great reforms, especially those involving some radical change in the habits of a people, are necessarily of slow, almost imperceptible growth. But shall we claim that Christian- ity is a failure, because, up to this time, greed and selfishness, rather than the love of the neighbor, is too often the rule of civil- ized life? It is an oversight to speak of the Phonetic reform for which Isaac Pitman labored as embracing "two theories." Pho- netic truth is one, whether applied to a stenographic, a common script, or a typic representation of the language. A theory that has, during the past half centun% won over an army of advocates, that has been accepted and tested, in a thousand instances, in private life and in public schools, and shown to be the easiest and speediest means of reading English, both in Phonetic and Romanic type ; that has been pleaded for by statesmen, philolo- gists, philanthropists and educators, individually and in public conventions ; a theory that has entered into and modified ever}' English and American primary reading and spelling book, and that has been accepted and used, with varying modifications, in every important English dictionary published of late years, can- not, in fairness, be called an entire failure. But the prime factor on which success or failure is to be predicated, is not so much the acceptance, as the relative com- pleteness of the scheme, which Isaac Pitman formulated to achieve a Writing and Printing Reform. And no verdict on this question can be just that does not take into account the five dis- tinct phases of intellectual and practical work on which my brother's life was spent. They were, (i) the attainment of a cor- rect analysis of English Speech ; (2) the invention of a brief, 8 SJK ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. philosophic and practical Shorthand ; (3) providing a convenient and facile phonetic Script Alphabet; (4) providing a full and complete Phonotypic Alphabet ; (5) the attainment, for tempo- rary use, of an acceptable Amended Spelling, by means of the present Roman types. The success of the first and second phases of the Phonetic Reform is not questioned; and the speedy and wide success of a convenient and philosophic Shorthand is probably less due to the completeness of the scheme than to the general want that was felt by the intellectual and business world for some reliable, brief sys- tem which would relieve the writer from the slow and tedious longhand in common use. The success or failure of the third and fourth phases of the proposed reform, is a question that should de- pend upon the completeness and efficiency of the means offered to meet the ends desired, and any decision here is valueless that does not come from one who has made a special study of the necessary requirements and difficulties which the question involves. The fifth phase of the reform is the problem which is being slowly worked out in England, but with somewhat greater earnestness in this country, and the adoption of an Amended Spelling will, in time, lead to the acceptance of Isaac Pitman's dream, a full and complete phonetic representation of the language, Stenog- raphic, Script, and Typic. To what extent this has been attained, the causes of its acceptance or rejection, the modification of my brother's belief as to the best means of attaining the ultimate adoption of a strictly phonotypic standard, these are some of the incidents told in these pages. Difficult and complex was the problem which Isaac Pitman accepted as his life's work, and a wise decision in the settlement of details was not always reached. It may seem unbrotherly to say, but if phonetic history is to be impartially recorded, it must be set down that Isaac Pitman's earn- est nature led him to hasty conclusions in important matters of detail; he adopted changes and imaginary improvements, both in Phonography and Phonotypy, when patience, study and further tests would have shown their inexpediency and disadvantage; and thus, he often impeded the spread of the arts he so earnestly sought to establish, and the time, labor and argument incidental to many of his changes were doubled in his efforts to unmake them. Probably no man that ever lived could be safely taken by INTRODUCTORY. 9 another as a model; certainly not Isaac Pitman. Yet he was the most transparent, unsophisticated, generous, serious, methodical, industrious and pure-minded soul I ever knew. He was self-cen- tered, but his mental vision was so straightforward that it was often confined to a very narrow angle. No one was ever en- dowed with that supernatural vision which enabled him, from one standpoint, to look quite round a given problem. If the average man of intelligence has a mental as well as a physical range of vision of one hundred and thirty-five degrees, my brother's men- tal angle would often be an acute one of about one-half of this. Thus early is this judgment hazarded, in a loving way, to make intelligible some passages told of his unique career. Isaac Pitman's main characteristic was his persevering, unswerving, methodical industry. Such was his concentration of thought and energy for his special mission and its incidental labors,- that everything else in life was willingly sacrificed; he thus accomplished in his life's span more literary work than any other man I know of. Jules Verne, it is said, boasts having written as many books as he had lived years more than seventy. Isaac Pitman wrote, compiled,^ or made more than two hundred and fifty books and booklets, ranging all the way from Bibles, Dictionaries, and yearly volumes or Phonographic and Phonetic Journals, to Manuals, Readers an,d Primers. My brother made many of his books after the fashion of the work of the old monastic scribes, before the invention of printing, in that he wrote that is, lithographed the page which was to meet the reader's eye. In all this work there was never a thought of personal merit, possible honor, or pecuniary gain. As he was his own publisher, so was he his own proof-reader, and authors who see only "revised" proofs of their writing and in the customary characters, know little of the perplexities of the aver- age "first proofs" of a new style, and would, as a rule, be quite unequal to the task of righting their varied typic wrongs. My brother's correspondence was immense : the discussion of theoret- ical points, phonographic and phonetic experiments, letters of encouragement to phonographers, and letters accompanying par- cels of books, tracts, and documents, occupied, it is safe to say, nearly one-half of his customary sixteen hours of daily duty. ISAAC PITMAN was the third of eleven children born to Samuel and Mariah Pitman, at Trowbridge, Wiltshire. The family consisted of seven boys and four girls. The sixth child, Abraham, who gave evidence of unusual mechanical and inventive ingenuity, died at the age of fifteen ; all the rest lived to arrive at maturity, and nine of the ten, Rosella, alone, remain- ing unmarried, became the parents of families. Isaac in his youth was of a diligent and studious habit. He was of a sensitive nature, inclined to be thoughtful, regarding life and its duties as matters of grave concern. He was impulsive only in rendering services to others. His elder brother, Jacob, in speaking of their youthful days, said: "Isaac never had any of that rollicking nonsense about him peculiar to most of us boys, nor do I remember his ever stopping on his way from school to play, but home directly he went, either to his books or to his work." Isaac received his early training in the grammar school of his native town, and left when he had just passed his thir- teenth year, having acquired only the elements of a common, but good, English education. He was taken from school mainly in consequence of his yielding, during school hours, to fainting spells, supposed at the time to be due to physical weakness, but which were occasioned, most likely, by the poisoned atmosphere of a too-crowded school-room, for the fainting spells ceased on his leaving school. From seventy-five to eighty boys were stowed away in a room none too large for a dozen. If, as is said, a healthy person vitiates three hundred cubic feet of air every 12 67^ ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. twenty-four hours, these grammar boys were being poisoned most of the time they spent in school. The play-ground of the school, moreover, was the church graveyard, crowded with head- stones and imposing "table" monuments, round which tears enough had once been shed, but which now were play-houses, over which the boys chased each other in wildest glee. I have a vivid recollection of the old grammar school, and the graveyard, which lay between it and the beautiful Gothic church. The school-room was quaintly arranged with gallery-like desks, reach- ed by four steps, which ran down the longer sides of the room, leaving the center free for recitation classes and the flogging of the boys. The room was also used for the church Sunday-school, of which my father was, on alternate Sundays, superintendent, and in which Isaac and his brothers, when they were old enough, were Sunday-school teachers. At the age of seven I was im- pressed into service, and, perched on a high stool, I taught boys who were about twice my height their a-b-c's. I have pleasant memories of this grammar school-room, from the fact that on Sunday mornings, before church service, our venerable rector, who was the poet, George Crabbe, usually came through the school on his way to the church vestry, and he rarely passed without stopping to greet me with a few friendly words, and a gentle pat on the head, in recognition, I suppose, of my youthful zeal as a Sunday-school teacher. The poet died in 1832. I fol- lowed him to his grave in the parish church, of which, for many years, he had been the rector, and in which each one of our eleven, one after the other, had been baptized, and, lying in the arms of the poet, had received his benediction. It is a curious reminiscence that I should have had this juvenile acquaintance with the poet, and again and again taken the hand that had, before Byron was born or Walter Scott was known, penned lam- poons on Washington, w r hile he was engaged in the struggle for American independence ! Isaac Pitman, at an early age, evinced a strong love for books and music. His first instrument was the flute, on which he and his elder brother acquired enough proficiency to be able to lead the singing of the children at the Baptist Sunday-school, of which my father was the founder. It is an evidence of father's activity and love of usefulness that he should, while superintend- ent of the church Sunday-school, have succeeded in establishing ISAAC PITMAN'S YOUTHFUL DAYS. 13 a Sunday-school in connection with Zion Chapel, the Baptist, dissenting place of worship, which my mother attended. Of this Sunday-school my father, on alternate Sundays, was also the superintendent. The four elder Pitman boys, I being the young- est, were teachers on alternate Sundays, in both the church and the Baptist Sunday-school. Our girls were teachers only in the latter. Isaac, as a youth, though of modest and retiring disposition, was far from lacking courage, even daring. When he was about sixteen I occasionally accompanied him to bathe, with one or two companions. On these occasions he would sometimes dive from a bridge which was at least ten to twelve feet above the water, a feat which none of his companions, as far as I remember, ever ventured upon. He frequently bathed, and always before break- fast, when the air and water were much too cold for others to think of taking a dip. I recall another illustration of what at the time, seemed great daring, though now it appears to have been a conclusion drawn from my own ignorance. It occurred when Isaac was about twenty. He had returned from the Burrough Road College, London, and in speaking of the great annual meet- ing of the Burrough Road Society, held in Exeter Hall, usually presided over by some nobleman, he said he would not hesitate to read the annual report before the meeting, consisting of three or four thousand intelligent people, which usually assembled on these great occasions. This seemed to me, at the time, about as daring as offering to lead an army to besiege a city, but Isaac spoke without any thought of boasting, for he had paid special attention to precisely those matters which, mastered, make a good reader, namely, correct pronunciation, distinct articulation, and other essentials of effective delivery. On leaving school Isaac was installed as Clerk in the count- ing-house of the large cloth manufactory of Mr. James Edgell, of which my father was the general manager for twenty years. It was a quiet boast of my father that during this time he had made a large fortune for his master, and had had his own salary raised eleven times, and once only from his own asking. After Isaac had been a year in service he begged piteously, I have heard father say, to be allowed to go back to school. Father did not think it best to consent, but advised his boy to stick to his desk and devote his leisure to books and study. Leisure ! The poor 14 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. lad went to work at six o'clock in the morning, as father did, con- tinuing until six in the evening ; yet Isaac found time for system- atic study. He rose at four o'clock, and he and his brother Jacob devoted every moment to their books and study till they left home for their daily duty ; and each evening gave them one or two additional hours for study. Father always took the greatest interest in the intellectual progress of his children, showing a wise discretion in giving them occupation which secured progress, at the same time keeping them from idleness and its mischievous results. At two periods in the family history father engaged a lady teacher to give us evening instruction. In the latter period, in which alone I participated, we supplemented our day school exercises with private instruction five evenings in the week. In Isaac's time it was only twice a week. The teacher was a Miss Xew, the daughter of the only bookseller in the place. She was a lady of sweet disposition and good general culture. This lady also gave to the four elder children instruction on the piano. The instrument on which they practised was a triangular harpsi- chord ; after two years of practise, when the young people had acquired some skill in fingering, it gave place to a genuine piano, a Broadwood of five and a half octaves. This was considered a great event, and the enjoyment which Isaac derived from the use of this instrument seems to have led him to regard it as a special gift from Heaven. In proof of his gratitude, he saved his pocket money till it amounted to five shillings a large sum to him and then having procured a silver crown, a coin somewhat larger than the American dollar, he quietly dropped it into the contribution box of Zion Chapel, a thank-offering which Heaven, if so pleased, might accept as evidence of his gratitude. This incident was un- known to any member of the family till years afterwards, when Isaac himself told it in one of his merry moods. From thirteen to nineteen Isaac Pitman was a self-instructed student. The bookseller at Trowbridge had a lending library, said to be one of the first established in the country ; to this father subscribed, and Isaac greedily availed himself of the privilege it afforded. While music was his pleasure and enjoyment, good literature had a great attraction for him, and Milton, Addison, Pope, Steele, Johnson and Cowper were favorites, whose writings were not merely read, but critically studied, and considerable por- tions of them, both of prose and poetry, were committed to mem- ISAAC PITMAN'S YOUTHFUL DAYS. 15 ory. During his clerking days, when he was about sixteen, he be- gan the study of Taylor's system of Shorthand, a cheap edition of which was published, at three shillings and sixpence, by Harding, a Birmingham teacher of Shorthand. Previous to this the lowest price at which a work on shorthand was published was half a guinea ten shillings and sixpence. Isaac Pitman made use of the art for private memoranda and for making extracts from works he read thus preserving the extract and partly memorizing the matter, till in two years he could write about eighty words a minute. It was at this early period of his life that Isaac Pitman's atten- tion was called to the disparity between the printed and spoken language. In reading he frequently met with words, the mean- ing of which he understood, but never having heard them in con- versation, he was doubtful as to their correct pronunciation, and the only recourse was reference to the pronouncing dictionary. This occurred so often that he resolved to read carefully through Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, and copy out every word whose pronunciation or spelling was unfamiliar to him. When the task was completed, he found that he had a list of about two thousand words, which he copied with the proper diacritical markings, and these he committed to memory, both as to pronunciation and spelling. Two years later, when he was a school teacher, he re- peated this somewhat notable task. He made a patient and some- what thorough study of grammar, committing to memory rules and exceptions, lists of regular and irregular verbs, and the man- ifold particulars which need to be observed before language can be used in a grammatical, clear and definite verbal expression, and thus he attained a style of writing which, through life, char- acterized all that Isaac Pitman wrote. Isaac, in my youthful days, exercised an influence over the rest of the family that no other of my brothers or sisters did. We played no pranks on him, but had a certain respect for his word, and regard for his authority, not unlike that we felt for father's. I distinctly recall that when I was about eight years of age I did something of which Isaac disapproved. I saw I was to receive a reprimand or something worse, so off I ran, without counting the cost, for Isaac pursued and, catching me, said, with perfect calmness, "I will punish you for doing wrong, and then I will punish you for running away," and so he did, by giving me some 1 6 S/# ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. vigorous thumps. It would be unfair to my brother's memory if I did not say that, later, when he became a school-teacher, he avoided corporal punishment on principle, as far as possible, and when he had eighty boys in his charge, and I was his assistant, the punishment must have been slight, for I have no distinct recollection of a single flogging. The seriously active and self-denying nature of Isaac Pitman naturally fitted him to become a Wesleyan Methodist. He could not feed on the dry husks of Church-of-Englandism of that day, nor would his reason permit him to accept the chilling faith of his mother's unthinkable Calvinism, and so, when about eighteen, he became an earnest and devoted Methodist. Wesleyan Method- ism, seventy years ago, retained much of the simplicity of life, dress and manners of Wesley and his immediate followers, and their Methodism was an active propagandism, Christian zeal, and devotedness to spiritual things like that which characterized the life and labor of that beautiful soul, its founder. Those were days before Methodism became respectable; when Methodist chapels were barn-like structures ; when its adherents were, for the most part, gathered from the people, and not from the classes ; when Methodism was regarded not merely as a heresy, but an apostasy from the church, and, perhaps, the least respectable and most disliked form of dissent. One, like my brother, who would be claimed as a Church-of-England youth, would be ostracized by a defection to Methodism. It needed the heroism of high resolve to avow himself a Wesleyan in those early days of Methodism. Church-of-England toryism of that period met all forms of prog- ress, whether religious, political or educational, in a spirit of bitter hostility. What intolerance we have outgrown, even within the memory of the living ! The views and feelings of the majority of the English clergy of that day are reflected in a passage worth re- calling, which refers to the proposed repeal, by the British Par- liament, of those unjust, cruel and obnoxious restrictions, social, civil, and political, to which Catholics, Quakers and some other Dissenters were then subject, known in history as the Corporation and Test Acts. "If the present ecclesiastical constitution must fall, far better is it to consign ourselves to the high-toned toryism of popery, than to crouch to the abject republicanism and the low- born canaille of dissent." This occurs in the "Lives of the Bishops of Bath and Wells," by the Rev. S. Hyde Casson.M. A., F. S. A., ISAAC PITMAN'S YOUTHFUL DAYS. 17 1829, and Methodism is the special heresy aimed at! From to- day's stand-point, it seems amazing that a cultured English clergyman should thus commit himself to record with respect to a branch of the Christian church, which, in this country at least, has grown as "respectable" as Kpiscopalianism, quite as wealthy, and, socially and politically, more powerful. How utterly the conservative spirit of that day misread the growth of human progress; how completely they failed to divine that in little more than half a century, these despised Wesleyan seceders would worship in their own Gothic churches, and aid their devotional services by vested choirs whose performance would equal those heard only in their own cathedrals. This spirit of opposition to needed progress was afterwards encountered by the subject of this memoir, when he proposed to smooth the path of learning for the young by the reform of English spelling. Methodism suited the active temperament of Isaac Pitman, if for no other reason, than that it gave him something worth doing on the Sunday, for he was barely twenty when he began to preach, and to meet this duty meant considerable thought and preparation, and often a walk of many miles into the country before reaching the scene of his appointment. THE intellectual and moral rigidity of Isaac Pitman's character came from his father, who was, in family mat- ters, a disciplinarian. He was strict, indeed severe, but never harsh in the treatment of his children. We were taught to obey, and we did so from habit, influenced doubtless by know- ing the penalty of disobedience. Father's requests, disagreeable though they might seem, were complied with promptly and with- out an audible murmur or clouded brow. We were probably not so prompt as the Wesley children, of whom John Wesley said that if he and Charles were writing, they would stop in the mid- dle of a character to obey a command from either mother or father. If the Wesley children were not born to obedience, the mother, before they could walk, "broke their wills and reduced them to subjection." Our mother's commands were not always obeyed with like promptitude. Her request might be met with little objections, but a repeated "Please do it" was instantly obeyed, for well we knew that disobedience would be reported to father, and that would only add to the gravity of the offense. John Ruskin says the best and truest blessings of his life came from his being taught perfect obedience, and the meaning of peace in thought, aim, and word. "I never had heard my father's or mother's voice once raised in any question with each other, nor seen an angry or even slightly hurt or offended glance in the 19 20 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. eyes of either;" and "I obeyed word or lifted finger of father or mother, simply as a ship her helm." I think few will read the passages John Ruskin wrote of his childhood without con- cluding that the exacting discipline of his mother would have harmed and hardened a less gentle nature. We, surely, were equally blest, for an angry or even hasty word or a passionate glance of the eye of either of my parents would have been as unlocked for and startling to me as the lifting of the roof or the upheaving of the foundations of the house. The Pitman boys were disciplined by whipping, six or eight strokes on the back, with coat removed, were given with a strap, "which broke no bones." We were called up to father's desk, no flinching was allowed, and the chastisement always wound up with an affirmative response to the question, "Will you promise not to repeat this ? " We cried aloud, but were careful not to make too boisterous a demonstration, knowing that would only bring an extra stroke or two. The girls were never whipped, and I do not think the boys were subjected to corporal punishment after they were thirteen or fourteen years of age. Father never punished a child in anger, and a passion- ate or hasty blow was a thing unknown. Our chastisement was inflicted from a parental sense of duty, and was administered with such judicial impartiality that generally I felt, by the time the tears were dry, that the penalty about balanced the crime. This was a period when the old style of corporal punishment was in vogue, when the chastisement of boys in public and private schools was, from today's standpoint, brutal in its severity and frequency. I remember being one of nearly two hundred boys in a school where, on one occasion, every boy was whipped for the prank of an undiscovered culprit. We were ranked in single file, and, as the master came up, the right hand of each possible culprit was extended, palm uppermost, and a sharp blow was struck with a cane. Some boys would screw up their nerves to bear it with a suppressed grin, but to a sensitive nature and skin the pain was horrible, and the hand would smart for hours after the punishment. If a boy, in his terror, withdrew his hand, as many did, he was given a double stroke. It was noticeable in our family that as it increased, the punishments grew less frequent, and the younger boys knew less of the severe discipline that fell to the lot of the elders. There was a legend in the fam- THE FATHER AND MOTHER. 21 ily, among the children, that Isaac was never whipped, meaning that he never needed it. Only grave offenses were punished grave from the child's standpoint ordinary ones were condoned with a reprimand or caution not to offend a second time. The last whipping for which I was "called up to the desk," was, I remember, for enticing my younger sister into a quagmire, in which my clothes were much bespattered, and my sister was smirched to her knees. The experience I have gained in the seventy years since I received my last whipping, leaves me in doubt as to the efficacy of corporal punishment, and I think that equally good results in our case might, in the long run, have followed a milder course. Who can tell? There seems to be no unvarying rule for the management of children, so unlike in physical and mental organization, and especially in the won- drously changed social conditions of today, save that of never- ending lovingkindness, tempered with infinite patience. It is noteworthy that none of father's nine children, who have reared families with differing degrees of success, have followed his some- what severe rule. In my early days, the English family had not outgrown the feudal system. Children were made to feel they were but serfs and thralls with "no rights," only duty and service to those whom Providence had set over them. When I think of the easy familiarity with which my children treat me, I recall with amaze- ment that in my young days, on each return from school, on entering the room in which my mother sat, standing near the door, I made my customary bow of salutation, repeating, with becoming gravity, "Your servant, ma'am," or "Your servant, mother." A bit of English history is associated with one of the latest of my punishments. One summer evening father and mother had left the house to attend the weekly service at the chapel. It so happened that on the afternoon of that day I violated some rule, and for the offense was promptly sent to bed immediately after tea. A few minutes after my parents were out of sight, the London stage-coach came in, stopping at an inn opposite our house. Something unusual had happened. The London stage- coach was decorated with flags and evergreens, and the guard blew his horn with unusual vigor while driving into the town. A crowd instantly collected around the stage-coach to learn the 22 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. SAMUEL PITMAN. THE FATHER AND MOTHER. 23 exciting news that the Reform Bill had past ! A few minutes only seemed necessary to bring out the town band. A proces- sion was formed, and the townspeople marched and shouted as only victorious patriots can. I joined the procession and made one of the shouters. Jubilant as a ten-year-old boy may be, I was prudent enough to be back in bed when my parents returned. The Reform Bill, bitterly opposed by the nobility and all the rich, conservative classes, after years of struggle was finally past (1832), and a revolution averted ! The Reform Bill abolished the "rotten burroughs." In my native county, Wilts, old Sarum, with its thirteen voters, sent two members to parlia- ment, while large, populous towns like Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, and, I believe, Manchester, had no representation. I had grown to manhood, and left home, before the thought ever distinctly occurred to me that my father was other than an ordinary personage. I knew that he was intelligent, that he was very generally looked up to, and his advice in township matters riot infrequently sought. I knew he had executive ability to manage a large cloth manufactory, and was equal to the adjust- ment of the many conflicting human interests that grew out of such a charge. I knew that he had been an earnest educational pioneer. Determined on some form of popular education, he had secured subscriptions and had seen a large school house built the first, I believe, in the west of England for the instruction of the children of the working classes. Such schools were con- ducted ort the "Bell and Lancaster" systems. They were unsec- tarian, and were frowned upon by the supporters of the estab- lished church. It was years afterwards, in my native town, before church people followed in the "revolutionary" road, and built their first parochial school. I knew, too, that my father had been the moving spirit in the establishment of the first Infant School in our town, on the Pestalotsian system, and further that he had aided the temperance movement years before the teetotal crusade. I knew he had established a library for his work-people, and stocked a room with a few hundred readable books, and that he frequently sat there and read of an evening to encourage a few among the working people who could read, to spend their evenings in like manner. I knew, too, that his influ- ence and example had prevented our home from being occasion- ally turned to a domestic bedlam. In my Uncle X's family the 24 SJR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. children frequently quarreled and scolded at meal and at other times, after the proverbial fashion of "cats and dogs." I knew that in Uncle L,'s family, though, the children were as well instructed as we were ; they thought less of books and studies than of business and getting rich by availing themselves of the labor of others. It was thus only after I left home and was brought in con- tact with other men that I realized how much father differed from the majority. He was freer from illusions than most men. He did not imagine that his opinion and criticism were essential on all points and occasions ; he was therefore a man of few words, but what he did say seemed reasonable and pertinent, and better said than left unsaid. He was wholly free from the illusion of attaching importance to creeds and dogmas. He knew that the views of men relating to life, here and hereafter, had been matters of growth and change from time immemorial, and that it was no part of wisdom to assume certainty about things concerning which the wisest and best of men radically differed. He was not only tolerant of other people's views on politics, religion and morals, but they seemed to interest him chiefly as indications by which to measure the worth and credibilty of men. He always seemed more willing to listen than to talk, and he had Sir Walter Scott's instinct of getting out of people what they knew that was of interest or importance. In politics he was a Liberal, though his master, whom he served till mid manhood, was a stanch Tory. The political representative who seemed concerned for the public welfare rather than upholding class interests, always commanded his vote and earnest support. The removal of ignorance, by the dissemination of knowledge, father regarded as the important work of his life, and efforts in this direction occupied all the time he could spare from the somewhat exacting duties of his cloth- manufacturing business. He enjoyed good health. I never remember him ailing in any particular ; indeed, for father to have complained of head, heart or stomach-ache, would have seemed so much of a novelty as to be akin to a joke. He never coddled himself with any form of table luxuries ; he ate simple food, and was compensated by enjoying it to the latest days of his life. He was essentially a man of action, but wholly free from a hurried, or bustling habit. He was always occupied, and I never remem- ber seeing him deliberately seat himself to rest. When the day's THE FATHER AND MOTHER. 25 duties were over he took his arm chair by the fire, but never without a book, which he would close up on his thumb, if any- thing of interest made an occasion for talk with mother or the children. In these days of changing fashion in dress it is worth recalling that father, all his life, retained the habit of his youth and wore knee-breeches. "Full dress," when he left the house or counting-house for town calls, church, or meeting, consisted simply of donning gaitors to cover his stockings. Black broad- cloth constituted his uniform clothing. Recreations? He had none. His business took him to London, one hundred miles distance, by stage-coach, about twice a year for a stay of three to five days. When I was about twelve years of age I enjoyed the great treat of being taken to London on one of these journeys. Father was my guide for a week, and a visit to the National Gallery, the Cathedrals, the Tower of London, the Sloan Museum, and a few other of the rarer sights of the great metropolis, when I saw fine pictures, fine statuary, fine buildings, fine missal illu- mination, and a forest of shipping for the first time, were sensory visions, that have remained so vivid that they made a sort of mental nuclei, round which seem to cluster all that has since reached my brain through the sense of sight. Yet father's education in his boyhood was limited in the extreme. I have frequently heard him say I think more as a boast than a confession that he received but one week's regular schooling in his life. He must have been a youth of unusual aptitude and diligence; for by the time I was old enough to judge, he was considered a well-informed man. He had made a special study of astronomy, so that he could calculate eclipses; and, after the fashion of the period, he became absorbed in astrology. Our Family Bible contained the carefully-drawn horoscopes of every member of the family, all the work of father's brain and hand. In after years, to his credit be it said, he lost all faith in the influence of the planetary system on human destinies. My mother was calm, sweet, and placid at all times. I never saw her angry, and I have heard that she had never been known to utter an unkind or reproachful word of any person, present or absent. She had strength and firmness of character, combined with perfect conscientiousness. Her smile was exceed- ingly sweet; but she was never known to laugh. Her features 26 S/A ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. were regular, comely, and pleasant, rather than beautiful. Her face, even late in life, showed a skin of clearest texture, and of a pinkish hue like that of healthy childhood. Her general cul- ture was limited. Her reading, in the little time left from family cares, seemed confined to the Bible and Calvinistic lit- erature. She was by nature and training of a devotional tem- perament; and the extreme Calvinistic doctrines, under the influence of which she was born and bred, could not but tend to give life and its after-prospect a necessarily serious and gloomy aspect. I suppose, dear heart, her inmost assurances were that all her own children might be of the elect. My mother's nose was of perfect Grecian type, save that it was perceptibly flat- tened at the tip. Isaac had father's slightly bridged nose, with mother's tip. On one occasion, when Isaac returned home after a year's absence, my mother hastened to meet him; but the hall- way chanced to be in darkness. In the embrace, my mother, to relieve her mind of any uncertainty, felt for the tip of his nose. "Yes," said she, "it is Isaac; I could not be mistaken." The conduct of the girls of the family was greatly influenced by mother's serious and religous feeling. I never heard a word of small talk at any meal, relating to dress or fashion, or any trivial personal matter. As a rule, the children under fourteen were expected to be silent, and those under twelve stood while eating. None of the girls were allowed to indulge in such worldly adornment as curls or puffs, or to wear ribbons in their hair. No jewelry of any kind was ever worn by any member of the family. The only exception to this was in the use of a small, round-headed gold pin that fastened mother's muslin neckerchief. None of the children were taught to dance. Play- ing cards were never seen in the family circle. Probably every member of the family grew to adult age without having handled a card, or knowing the name of any one in the pack. Omens, lucky and unlucky days and things, were not recognized in the family, and were never mentioned save to laugh at them. After Isaac left home and became a school teacher, Wesleyan Methodist, and a preacher, his letters, which were frequent and long and beautifully written, must have greatly influenced mother and father; for then daily family prayers were, for the first time, established and regularly observed. A chapter from the Bible was read, each of us taking a verse. This was followed by an THE FATHER AND MOTHER. 27 extemporary prayer from mother ; and how pleading, pathetic and devotional it was ! What else could come from a pure and lovely soul who had been taught to believe herself the "chief among sinners" and who could hope to escape eternal torture only by the free grace and abundant mercy of a terrible God? My mother's life was, on the whole, singularly free from any abiding sorrow. Neither her husband, his affairs, her household, nor her children brought her, as far as I remember, a single real trouble. Yet her gloomy faith made what should have been a sunlit existence unduly grave and somber. In a retrospect one cannot but wish she had possessed the reasoning suspicion of the pious Scotch mother, whose boy having been "cut off in his sins," and, from the orthodox standpoint, doomed to pay the eternal penalty of the non-elect, was prayed for by his stricken parent : "Oh, L,ord, if Ye had been a mither, Ye nae wad hae done it." 28 ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. Kingston House was selected by the appointed Committee of British Architects to be reproduced at the late Paris Exhibition, as the best available type of a fine English Home. "The reproduction at the British Pavilion of the Paris Exhibition of Kingston House, Bradford-on-Avon, has naturally attracted fresh attention to that fine specimen of British architecture of the period when the strong castle having become obsolete, the lordly mansion took its place. One of the most interesting associations of Kingston House is that for man} r years it was the home of the Pitman family." Mr. Frederick Harrison writes : "The British Pavilion, though one of the least con- spicuous, is the best and most truly artistic in the whole Street of Nations, the only one, indeed, that a man of taste can view without a smile or groan." T^cmdon Press. were two in our family whose characteristics were of so serious, self-denying and earnest a type, that their individuality must have stood out in marked relief among the young people with whom they associated. Melissa was the first-born, and between her and Isaac, who was four years younger, there was a spiritual kinship that probably, though unconsciously, influenced my brother's entire life. She was the first of the family to break away from the cruel logic of Calvinistic orthodoxy in which the family had been schooled, and she was the first to suffer persecution, and pay the pioneer's price for taking an advanced step in the religious evolutionary march. Melissa was a teacher in the Sunday-school, and a reg- ular attendant on the Calvinistic preaching of the family min- ister, when she was spiritually aroused by the teachings of a new sect that invaded our town, professing to preach and practise the doctrines of the earliest Christians. They were called Irving- ites, and from 1825 to 1835 attracted much attention in England, the sect spreading rapidly through the large towns, though the congregations were never large. My sister attached herself with entire devotion to this revived primitive church. Though her life was full of duties, she was never absent from their daily morning and evening services, the first beginning at six o'clock in the morning. These people professed to follow the rule and practise of the primitive Christians, and called themselves the Catholic Apostolic Church. They set duty before dogma, and insisted on daily life and conduct that should square with an educated Christian conscience. I do not remember that they advocated a community of goods, but they consistently revived the early Christian practise of paying a tithe of their income to the church. 29 ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. The religious community from which my sister seceded were greatly moved, and considered it their duty to be shocked and scandalized at her conduct. Our preacher was a remarkable man. In bodily proportions and positiveness he was a veritable Dr. Johnson, and he must have excelled the learned Doctor in strength of lung. He was a man of very limited culture, but was profoundly religious, gloomy, and dogmatic. He had a stentorian voice that did not lack a certain rude melody and persuasiveness when he became aroused, as was his wont, in the latter part of his sermons. Then his voice rose and rolled in such tumultuous waves that he greatly impressed those who were within the tabernacle, and I have heard my father say that he had distinctly heard the preacher's voice through the open windows a quarter of a mile from the pulpit. Our minister did not like the defec- tion of a member of one of his leading families, and he thundered his invectives and metaphorically shook his pastoral crook at stray lambs, and the whole congregation knew that it was my gentle sister who had strayed from the shepherd's care. The Irvingites, as a sect, seem to have disappeared from the religious world. The founder was Edward Irving, a Scotch minister, who had been assistant to Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, but it was not until he settled in London that he became a celebrity. He was a man of remarkable intellect and extraor- dinary oratorical powers. That he was the loved and admired friend of Thomas Carlyle, and had been the teacher of Jane Welsh, who became Carlyle's loving wife, are facts which indicate that he was a man cast in no ordinary mold. Irving was tall, grave and solemn. Earnestness and deep religious fervor per- vaded his delivery. His aspect was commanding and his coun- tenance was marked by a dark and melancholy beauty. The tones of his voice were remarkably deep, melodious, sympathetic and of unusual power. Irving's oratory must have been of no ordinary kind to call forth a reference to it from Canning, in the House of Commons, mention of which is made in the sketch of Irving's life, given in the last addition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Such was the powerful influence of his preaching that it gave rise to a class of extraordinary manifestations, which, by his followers, were believed to be of supernatural origin. Men and women in the congregation, the latter more especially, would shriek out strange, weird, unintelligible utterances, that MELISSA, THE FIRST BORN. 31 were deemed prophecies by Irving's followers. These utter- ances, which were called "unknown tongues," have since been generally regarded as hysterical, psychic manifestations, due to the preacher's religious fervor, his hypnotic and extraordinary oratorical powers. This, evidently, was the view of them taken by Irving's more intelligent cotemporaries, and certainly by Mrs. Carlyle, with whom, before her marriage, Irving was once deeply in love. She is reported to have said, "Had I married Irving, there would have been no unknown tongues." Irving is credited with first using the expression, "The fatherhood of God," and he preached a faith in accord with the thought. The phrase caught the religious world and had much to do in lessening the terrors of the older religious belief. The great preacher seemed gifted with prophetic fore-light. He did not accept the social disquietude and antagonisms of life as other than passing conditions, from which St. James' Christianity would deliver, first the church, and ultimately the world. Years afterwards some writer of note used the equally expressive phrase, "The brotherhood of man," two short terms that express a modern phrase of belief and hope, and which have tended to humanize the religious and social thought of today. The evo- lutionary idea, however, might be credited to the progress of human thought that grew out of the American revolution, for more than a hundred years ago, Thomas Paine used the all- embracing expression, "The brotherhood of the human race," to typify an ideal, universal fraternity, in contradistinction to the then prevailing rule of Kings and the submission of Subjects. Edward Irving, like John Wesley, was highly susceptible to aesthetic emotions. On one occasion he accompanied some aristocratic ladies of his congregation on a tour through one of the poor districts of London, in search of children to attend their school. In one wretched apology for a home, they found a child of exceptional interest and beauty, with large blue eyes, and long, wavy golden hair. Now it was a rule of the school that every child should have its hair cut short. Irving's eyes and heart were moved by the child's beauty, and he is said to have feelingly joined the mother in her pleadings to spare the child's golden adornment; b.ut the high-born dames had no heart to be softened by their appeal; the iron rule was not to be broken. Only a soul of unusual worth, possessing in no ordinary 32 57/? ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. measure the gifts of intellect, imagination and expression, would attract the friendship and excite the admiration of men so unlike as Chalmers, Coleridge, Carlyle, Wordsworth, Wilkie, Sir Wm. Hamilton and Canning. Irving throughout his brilliant but brief career, was equally remarkable for his child-like simplicity and mental and spiritual gifts, as for his amazing credulity. In keeping with his unsophisticated nature was an incident which occurred at one of his London, suburban, open-air preachings. During his discourse, when a standing throng of thousands hung breathless on his words, an alarm was created by the cries of a mother, whose child had strayed from her side and was lost in the vast assembly. But soon the child was raised aloft in the throng, and the excitement of the mother was calmed as Irving cried aloud, "Give me the child." The preacher took it as it was passed over the heads of the crowd, and it instantly nestled on his breast in perfect peace. He continued his discourse, but now his theme was changed to the Saviour's loving regard for the young, and with the child tenderly held in his arms, he concluded an exhortation of such winning and commanding eloquence that all who heard it would probably retain a vivid impression of it through life. Irving's teachings did much to mold the ethical and spiritual character of my sister, and she, in turn, influenced and strengthened the moral and spiritual fiber of her sympathetic brother Isaac. How it came about I do not know, but it so happened that a leading family at Trowbridge, who were the disciples of the "new lights," were a family of wealth and intelligence. They must have been attracted by my sister's devotional earnestness, and she became so much of a favorite that she was invited to accompany them to London on a religious pilgrimage to see and hear the celebrated divine. They were the guests of Mr. and Lady Drummond, an aristocratic family of intelligence, wealth, and the highest social standing, all of which had been dedicated to the service of the newly-arisen prophet. Seeing and hearing the great leader made a profound impression on Melissa, and added, were it possible, a tenfold zeal to her devo- tion to primitive Christianity. She became more severe and Quaker-like in the fashion of her dress, eschewing all colors but black or the somberest gray. I recall an instance of her ascetic rigidness. A mirror which hung over the mantel of her sitting- MELISSA, THE FIRST BORN. 33 room she had removed, that she might not be tempted to cast a glance at her reflected image on passing it. She conducted a private school for girls and instructed pupils on the piano. She was active, but serene, intelligent, self-sacrificing, and devotional. She was not a bigot, but was always anxious for further light. In the course of a few years she became, through Isaac's influ- ence, a reader and receiver of the doctrines of Swedenborg, and so continued to the day of her death. IT was an important event in Isaac Pitman's career, and, though unforeseen at the time, proved to be the turning point in the destinies of the Pitman family, when Isaac, at nineteen, left home for the Borough Road Training College, London, father having decided to make him a school teacher. This was at a period when the necessity of some general system of education for the people first began to arrest attention in Eng- land, and before school-teaching was a recognized profession. Great was the surprise of our relatives and friends at father's odd determination, but he had resolved that had he a hundred chil- dren, to use his own words, he w r ould not bring up one of them to his own business, with its cares, perplexities, competition and possible misfortunes. In subsequent years, five others of the family Jacob and Joseph, of the boys, and Rosella, Jane and Mary, of the girls, were received and trained in this college and afterwards appointed to schools in different parts of England. So thorough was the satisfaction which Isaac gave at the train- ing college, and so encouraging were the reports he himself sent home, that Jacob, who had served seven years' apprenticeship to a carpenter and builder, concluded that school teaching might be the more profitable use of his life, and when father personally applied at the college for the admission of another of his sons, the Director, the able and admirable Henry Dunn, answered with a compliment which father was fond of repeating, "Yes, 35 36 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. you may send me as man)- more of your children as you can spare." The Borough Road College, in which Isaac Pitman was now installed, was the great central parent school, in which young men and women who were sufficiently educated were received to be trained in the working details of the Bell and Lancaster system of popular instruction. The college consisted of separate departments for male and female teachers, and each department had a double function, the training of teachers and the instruc- tion of the young. The teachers were domiciled at the institu- tion, which included two large schools for boys and girls, in each of which four or five hundred children, from seven to fourteen years of age, received an elementary education. It is a novelty, from today's pedagogic standpoint, to recall a visit I made to this institution more than half a century ago, when I witnessed its semi-military and somewhat despotic training and discipline. In the great parent school I found nearly five hundred boys assem- bled in one large square room, the floor of which, rising at a slight angle, theater fashion, had its center filled with parallel lines of desks and seats, facing the front, leaving a space of nine or ten feet at the sides for recitation classes. A somewhat high and imposing platform, on which the teacher was seated, occu- pied the lower end of the room. The youngest children were seated nearest the platform and were graded towards the upprr end according to age and general proficiency. The system of instruction of Bell and Lancaster is monitorial, methodical, and semi-military in its operations. All movements of the children, such as turning and showing slates for the inspection of the monitor ; all changes, such as leaving the seats for the recitation classes, are directed by a brief word of command, given by the monitor of the day. At a given command the children would, simultaneously, cease writing, and at another command they hung their slates on a screw fastened in the desk in front of each boy. At another command they turned in their seats, facing to the left, resting the right hand on their own desks and the left on the edge of the desk immediately behind them ; at another command they jumped out and stood, facing the direction in which they were to march, each boy standing erect, eyes to the front, with hands clasped behind him. They remained in this position till their line was ready to inarch to the semi-circular rings which THE START IN LIFE AS SCHOOLMASTER. 37 marked their' respective classes in the aisles. The marching was commenced by the first boy of the lowest row and the first boy of the uppermost row starting simultaneously for their classes. As the last boy of the first row left his desk, the first boy of the second row followed, and so on until the seats were emptied and the aisles filled, when the monitors took their places in the center of each class, with pointer in hand, to direct attention to the sus- pended chart or board, on which was pasted the lesson of the day. Books were used only by the advanced classes. At the time referred to, I think the only book used was the Bible, possi- bly the New Testament only ; all the instruction in grammar, arithmetic, geography, history and geometry the only branches, with writing, then taught were contained in clearly-printed charts and tables. The Bell and Lancaster system, as before intimated, is essentially monitorial, but in the London training school the monitors were the young men and women who, in actual service, gained the knowledge they aimed to acquire. Visitors to these schools, who knew by experience the terrific noise of an average grammar school of that period, with its fifty to seventy boys, conning their lessons aloud, the babel-like con- fusion being a necessary condition of memorizing their lessons, as I have again and again heard them avow, were much impressed on seeing a large concourse of children seated in per- fect order, and pursuing their exercises in almost absolute silence. Quietude in a large assembly of children is impressive, if only from the fact that, where children are gathered in num- bers, we naturally expect a certain amount of noise, varying, according to circumstances, from a whisper to a noisy riot. In this case the quietude was emphasized by the monitor of the day, who, standing aloft at the bottom of the room, slate in hand, would occasionally break the silence by calling out, in a subdued tone, and writing down the name of any restless culprit who turned his head, whispered to his neighbor, or sneezed or coughed with undue energy. One novel effect of the discipline of the school I recall. I was one of a group of visitors, and, standing on the platform, we looked at a sea of brown heads bent over their slates and working away at their exercises in studious quiet- ness. The time had arrived for the reading, by the master, of the morning lesson from the Scriptures. The monitor, having stop- ped the writing, directed the slates to be hung, stood facing the 448548 38 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. school, with his right hand uplifted, but closed. At the word of command, "Heads !" all eyes were fastened on the monitor's hand. Suddenly opening it, in an upward direction, every boy, whose head a moment before was perhaps somewhat lowered, for effect, was jerked up and back, so that the visitor saw something akin to a flash of light as the bright sea of juvenile faces was suddenly brought into view. In this position of rapt attention, with the head thrown somewhat too far back for comfort, I thought, the lesson was read, and not a movement or unnecessary wink was seen in that disciplined army during the reading. The Bell and Lancaster system, the first British popular educational experiment, met the requirements of that period in perhaps the only practicable way. In the absence of any munic- ipal or state support, the schools had to be conducted on the most economic principle. The schools were not wholly free ; to make them so would have offended British independence. Each pupil paid two pence per week, and the remainder of the necessary revenue was made up by private subscriptions of the well-to-do classes. Inefficient as the scheme might be considered from the present American standpoint, with its free graded and high schools, it furnished an illustration of the success of one educa- tional factor which, in the future, may, with advantage, be ingrafted on the American school S3'stem, namely, the monitorial scheme, which has something more than economy to recommend it. Utilizing some of the time and knowledge of the more advanced pupils in giving instruction to the less advanced, would be discipline of exceeding value, and such aid would lessen the strain and nervous tension to which the average teacher of today is subjected by taking exclusive charge of a class of forty or fifty children. Isaac Pitman spent five months at the London training college ; he was then appointed to a school at Barton-on-Humber, in Lincolnshire, a town of four thousand people, lying on the flat, muddy banks of the estuary, separated by two or three miles of tidal mud and water from the flourishing seaport of Hull. The school of which he took charge was founded on Long's charity; it was attended by one hundred boys, and the salary of the teacher was ^70 per annum ; afterwards, when his efficiency was discovered, it was increased to ^80. Now, for the first time in his life, being -his own master, THE START IN LIFE AS SCHOOLMASTER. 39 Isaac Pitman was left free to follow the bent of an unusually conscientious and devotional nature, and he gave himself up, with enthusiam, to a life of systematic duty and self-denial. Seven hours were devoted to the school, seven hours to sleep, and the remaining ten were consecrated to study, devotional reading, self-discipline, and, according to his light, to the service of the Master. He parted his hair in the middle, at a time when it was seen only on women and in the pictures of Puritans and Saints. He abandoned music because he could make, as he conceived, a better use of the time, and fasted on Friday of each week. At one time he touched no food during the entire day, a somewhat absurd asceticism, seeing he was no professional saint, or anchorite, but a hard working schoolmaster. Finding it lessened his energy and impaired his usefulness, he aban- doned such extreme abstemiousness and henceforward limited himself to the omission of one or two meals. His Friday fast- ing was no make-believe substitute of fish for flesh, but a fast in fact as in name. He wrote and distributed temperance tracts, lectured on the evils of intemperance, and tried his utmost to wean the sea-faring folk of the little town from the use of rum. He preached and conducted class-meetings, and was accounted the most zealous of the Methodist flock. His friends, who knew him best, said that in zeal and self-denial he out-Wesleyed Wesley. His sense of duty made him intensely earnest, and his innate conscientiousness saved him from being the least bit of a hypocrite. During his four years' residence at Barton he read through the Scriptures published by the British and Foreign Bible Society, and corrected the errors in the parallel references, and for the second time he carefully read through Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, making, as before, a list of words about which he felt a doubt either as to spelling or pronunciation. To his satisfaction the list proved less numerous than at the first reading. His correction of the references in the Scriptures of the Bible Society led to the colossal undertakings of cor- recting the errors found in the five hundred thousand parallel passages of Bagster's Comprehensive Bible. His mastery of Walker's Dictionary, and especially of the principles of the language prefixed to that work, unquestionably led the way to the invention of Phonography. It was with great surprise that we received tidings of 40 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. Isaac's marriage, while he was at Barton, to the widow of Mr. George Holgate, a lady of nearly twice his age. Mr. Holgate was the leading lawyer of the place and a man of culture and high social standing. His wife was of good birth, of fair educa- tion, and possessed of a certain suavity of manners which at that period, more than now, distinguished the gentry from the trading classes. She possessed a life interest in a fortune of $25,000, which, during her life, yielded a sufficient income to meet the expenses of the household. A year after the marriage Isaac brought her to our Trowbridge home, and I well remember that we were all impressed with her lady-like speech, general bearing, and polished manners, as compared with the average deportment of our more Puritanical social stratum ; but those older than I seemed to think there was little unity of feeling, either on the mental or spiritual plane, between Isaac and his chosen partner. ISAAC PITMAN'S correction of the Bagster Comprehensive Bible, which just preceded the invention of Phonography, was probably one of the most laborious of literary labors ever voluntarily undertaken and faithfully executed, purely from "the love of use," to use his own favorite expression, and was quite characteristic of his studious, energetic, and unselfish nature. His custom had been, in his morning and evening reading of the Bible, to refer to every marginal parallel passage, and to scan critically the accompanying notes. In these studies he had dis- covered in the Bible he used, published by the British Bible Society, popularly supposed to be free from a single typographic error, numerous misprints and errors in the marginal references. These identical errors he found were, for the most part, repeated in the commentaries of Scott, Henry, and Adam Clarke, and, to his still greater surprise, he found many of them copied in Bag- ster's Comprehensive Bible. Isaac's corrections of the errors in the Bible Society's octave edition were sent to the Society's head- quarters, in London, but were never acknowledged, though the corrections were availed of in subsequent editions. My brother then wrote to Mr. Samuel Bagster, senior member of the well- known Bagster's Bible publishing house, stating his discovery that many errors in the Bible Society's edition of the Scriptures were repeated in the Comprehensive, and added (Barton-on-Hum- ber, October 15, 1835), "I have made it my custom, for two or three years, in my morning and evening reading of the Scrip- tures, to refer to every parallel place, and in some measure appreciate the value of the plan. If you would like to place a copy of your Bible under my care, to be considered your property, I 42 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. would make a constant and careful use of it, and give you the benefit of the corrections or mistakes that I may discover on reading it through." Bagster's Comprehensive Bible, the standard work of Bible students, comprises the authorized version of the Scriptures and a compilation of the references and parallel passages from all preceding Bible commentators, arranged on each page in double columns of notes and parallel references. The compilation being made from the latest editions, their correctness was assumed, as it was considered too herculean a task to verify their individual accuracy. Mr. Bagster acknowledged Isaac's letter with marked court- esy, saying that he contemplated issuing a new edition of the Comprehensive Bible, and would be glad if he could secure a revision of the entire annotations. A copy of the Comprehen- sive was dispatched to my brother by the first stage-coach, and in a few days, at his suggestion, another copy, divided into seven parts, stitched in paper covers, with untrimmed margins. In these parts, which lay conveniently on the table during examina- tion, the errors that were discovered were written, and as each part was completed it was returned to the London publisher. During the next three years almost every moment of Isaac's long days, not devoted to the school or required for special duties, was spent in the examination and revision of the four thousand notes, the five hundred thousand parallel passages, the extended chron- ological tables, and the tables of weights, measures, and coins. Many an hour did Henry and I sit at the same table, morning and evening, quietly reading, or scanning our lessons, while Isaac was "at work on his Bible." For the purpose of speedy reference and examination, my brother used a copy of Bagster's small, thin octavo polyglot Bible, in which he had arranged a series of narrow paper strips, pasted in at the back of the book, and projecting half an inch from the front margin. These strips, arranged one under the other, were inserted from the top front down towards the back, at the bot- tom of the book. On each strip was written the book, chapter, and verse at which that particular opening of two pages began and ended. Such was the facility with which Isaac could refer to any passage in the Old or New Testament, 'that an uninterrupted glide of the thumb and fingers would enable him to turn the CORRECTION OF THE COMPREHENSIVE BIBLE. 43 leaves of the already open polyglot, which lay upon the open pages of the Comprehensive, and place his index finger on any required verse. He would, after a quick glance, seize the strip which was nearest the required passage with his thumb and sec- ond finger, thus opening the book and turning the pages to the left. If the required passage was not found at the opening, the remaining fingers would slide one, two, or more to the right hand pages, until the required chapter and verse were in view, the forefinger still continuing its quick glide until it rested on the passage of which he was in search. The corrections and additions made in the entire work were numbered by the thousand. Mr. Bagster generously offered to pay any sum Isaac might designate for his services, but he would accept nothing. Generous, enthusiastic soul, he considered the study and discipline which the examination had given him a sufficient reward ! Mr. Bagster, during the remainder of his life, had a sincere respect for my brother, and when the corrected edition of the Comprehensive was issued from the press, a special copy, with extra margin, superbly bound, with silver plate inscription and inclosed in a beautiful casket, was sent the inde- fatigable corrector. On beginning the revision of the Comprehensive Bible, Isaac calculated that by giving daily a certain number of hours, seven days in the week, which, with his methodical life, he could confidently venture to promise himself to do, he could com- plete the revision in three years. The work, undertaken in the latter part of October, 1835, was finished in August, 1838, a month or two earlier than he had assigned for its completion. He gave at least five thousand hours of the closest mental and physical application to this revision. It was religiously perused every day in the week and every week in the year. A holiday, as far as I remember, was never taken, and if an occasional interrup- tion occurred by the stress of an unexpected duty, the lost time was made up by extra work on the following days. On its com- pletion he would not lessen the satisfaction he had derived from his work by accepting any pecuniary reward. I remember his saying to a friend, who expressed great surprise that he had received no payment for his long-continued service, "I offered to do the work freely, and, of course, I would not now accept anything for it ; it has been great satisfaction and a benefit to 44 ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. me; but now, when I want to give my whole attention to my phonetic Shorthand, I am only too grateful that it is completed." I can vividly recall my school days at this period, when I lived in my brother's family at Wotton-under-Edge, and though now sixty-five }'ears ago, well do I remember how exceedingly hard his Bible revision became towards its close, for it was at this period that the phonographic idea had taken lodgment in Isaac's brain, and we talked of nothing else on our way to and from school, and in our occasional morning walks, and intense was the joy of my brother at the completion of his long task and the opportunity it afforded him to give his time and thoughts, as well as his heart, to new ideas in the field of experiment and usefulness then opening up to him. A?TER four years' residence and school teaching at Barton, Isaac Pitman removed to \Votton-under-Edge, in Glou- cestershire. His brother Jacob had married, and settled in that beautiful county of hills and dales. Jacob's wife had been a governess in a ladies' seminary, and was, in many ways, qualified to carry out her ambition to establish and conduct a young ladies' boarding school of her own. It happened that an uncle of the lady owned a very charming homestead at North Nibley, Gloucestershire, containing several acres of lawn, gar- den, orchard and meadow, which he offered to lease to the young couple, at a nominal rent, on condition of their settling near him. The offer was gladly accepted, and Jacob and his wife were able to carry out their ideal program. The recollection of their rural paradise, and the many Saturday holidays my brother Henry and I spent there during our school-days with Isaac, with a three-mile walk over country roads that had no single foot of level ground, are among the joyous remembrances I recall of my boyhood. The wish to be near his brother, and the desire to escape the severe and piercing climate of Barton, with its northern sea breeze, which was giving Isaac frequent coughs and colds, together with the offer of a school at Wotton- under-Edge, three miles from Nibley, were sufficient reasons for Isaac's removal to the more congenial clime and lovely scenic features of that portion of Gloucestershire. 45 46 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. Isaac had not been settled at Wotton-nnder-Edge more than a year, when an incident occurred which changed his religious views, and, probably, the entire religious aspect of his life. On a stage-coach he had for a traveling companion, Mr. J. K. Bragge, of Clifton. This gentleman, on discovering that his companion was much inclined to gravity and studious reflection, and more engrossed by a book than by the scenery through which they were passing, inquired, at an opportune moment, if he had ever read any of the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Isaac knew only the name, but admitted that he had imbibed certain prejudices against the mystic writer from what Wesley had written of him. The conversation during the ride of several hours was sufficient to interest my brother in the new doctrines. A package of Swedenborg's works, formidable quartos, original editions, I remember, was in a few days forwarded to my brother by his friendly acquaintance, and a correspondence of great length ensued, with the final result that Isaac became an ardent receiver of the doctrines and teachings of the Swedish seer. In a letter from Isaac Pitman, inserted in the "Intellectual Repository," 1837, he thus states his convictions: "I consider the view I have of the spiritual world, of the internal sense of God's holy word, and of the person of the Lord and Saviour ('The Almighty,' Rev. i, 8, etc.), with which I have become acquainted through the writings of the New Church, as similiar to that arising from a curtain being raised, and I am now able to see, as it were, an ocean of light." The change in Isaac's religious views occasioned much comment, misapprehension and harsh judgment in the Methodist community to which he was attached, and in which, as at Barton, he had been an earnest worker, itinerant preacher, and class leader. Isaac's enlightenment and spiritual growth, as he regarded it, was, by his religious friends, interpreted as spiritual backsliding, and he was disciplined accordingly. He was cited to appear before the trustees of the church to answer the charge of heresy. The presiding elder of the district was an active little man, named Barbour. The name recurs to me at this moment, seemingly for the first time since the event, which took place more than sixty-five years ago. I was present on one of the three evenings devoted to the religious investigation. After the evening wrangle was over, I remember asking my brother, in FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE NEW AND TRUE. 47 my simplicity, "What makes Mr. Barbour so cross?" "Mr. Bar- hour is not angry," my brother replied, with a smile, "he is only very earnest to make it appear that he is in the right and that I am in the wrong, but I think I am fortunate in seeing things differently." The elders of the church, rinding that Isaac could not be reclaimed, suspended his work in the church and ultimately expelled him. Some of the more narrow-minded of the congre- gation, who were our former friends, made us feel that heresy was not respectable, but an offense to be met with snubs and slights ; Isaac did not seem to feel it in that way, but his wife, Henry and I were often made uncomfortable by the rebuffs and insinuations of our former friends ; but these little persecutions were, perhaps, more than offset by the cordial sympathy of new friends among the liberal-minded people of the town and neigh- borhood. The family henceforward, during Isaac's stay at Wotton-under-Edge, attended the Episcopal church, the rector of which, Mr. Perkins, a genial and scholarly gentleman, though feeling no attraction for Isaac's religious views, showed much respect and kindly feeling for him because of the rancorous persecution he had endured. The religious ferment did not stop with the church. The trustees of Isaac's school took up the matter, and decided that they could not longer regard him as a fitting instructor of the public school. This decision proved for- tunate for my brother, who, had he possessed a grain of worldly shrewdness, would, before this, have "expelled" himself and opened a private school for the children of the middle and pro- fessional class, which he now proceeded to do, for there was great need in the town for such a school. The only one in .the place was the Free Grammar School, in which twenty youths, sons of the trades-people, clad in university caps and flowing black gowns of the finest West-of-England cloth, renewed annually, were instructed in the classics, and little else. This school was an example of England's endowed institutions for the education of a limited number of boys, where the income from the original gift had so much increased by the growth of population and commerce, that the trustees were troubled to devise means for its expenditure. To expand the school by increasing the number of its beneficiaries, would be the sugges- tion of ordinary common sense, but from the British, conserva- tive point of view this would have been revolutionary and 48 Si/? ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. unconstitutional ! Isaac's school proved a success from the start, and yielded a larger income than the position he had been forced to resign. Before my brother had decided to what Christian ministra- tion he would temporarily attach himself, he chanced to be present at the Congregational church in the town, which was founded nearly a century ago, by Roland Hill, a dissenting minister of celebrity, who was remarkable for his eloquence and eccentricities, rather than for devotional fervor or erudition. On the occasion referred to, the minister made religious heresy a leading feature of his discourse, and said that among the unpardonable heresies of course from his Congregational point of view were denial of the Trinity and the Atonement, and added, that if he himself held such unscriptural views as he had described (and somewhat misrepresented), he should expect to be hunted out of the town like a mad dog! Here was an instance of the stricken deer, religiously viewed, seeking sanctuary, and the ecclesiastical hunter availing himself of the chance to inflict an additional wound! Another step in Isaac's development took place while living at Wotton-under-Edge. He became a vegetarian, not for religious, but humanitarian and physiological reasons. After his acceptance of the New Church doctrines, he gradually out- grew his extreme ascetic notions. He no longer fasted nor recommended it, and, judging by his countenance, a certain pious gravity which before marked his features, probably an expres- sion due to the mists and clouds of his religious belief, gave way to placidity and not unfrequent gleams of facial sunshine. He had become acquainted with a singular family, living a few miles from Wotton-under-Edge, consisting of two maiden sisters, somewhat past middle life. They were people of intelligence and wealth, and their country seat, Ebworth Park, was of great extent and beauty. They lived quiet, useful and charitable lives, and were noted among the country people for the simplicity of their manners and their mystic faith; but their crowning oddity was, "they would not eat meat!" That people rich enough to buy flesh meat would not eat it, was deemed unac- countable in rational folk, and probably was the only mysticism about these sweet and remarkable people. It must have been shortly after Isaac's first acquaintance with this family that an F/RST GLIMPSES OF THE NEW AND TRUE. 49 incident occurred which led to his instantaneous conversion to vegetarianism. A live chicken had been sent to the house, which was to be served for dinner. The housekeeper, an old and valued servant of the family, who had been brought by Mrs. Pitman all the way from their Lincolnshire home, would have "nothing to do with killing fowls; no indeed!" She was an example, of the old style of domestic servant, always yielding most faithful and willing obedience in the line of recognized duty, but sturdily independent outside of that limit. An appeal was then made to Isaac to undertake the duty, on which he and I descended to the area, a small stone-paved yard, on a level with the basement kitchen. Isaac, hatchet in hand, laid the victim's head on the block, and a cruel blow struck off what Isaac regarded as the seat of life in the bird; but as the chicken's brains are not all in the skull, the headless bird, escaping from his grasp, fluttered excitedly all round the area. This was so unexpected and shocking a sight that the bird had to be caught and a little more of its head chopped off. To a nature as sensi- tive as Isaac's, this experience was sufficient to make him instantly resolve that, henceforth, he would neither sacrifice life nor partake of the body when sacrificed a resolution adhered to for the remaining sixty years of his life. Of the rigid abstemiousness and fasting which distinguished Isaac's life at Barton, I know only from the talk of the family, and from our home practice of a Friday's fast, which Isaac, while at Barton, induced father and mother to adopt, and in which we children, I fear, unwillingly participated. But at Wotton-under- Edge we knew nothing of it. We ate each day three meals of savory food, more varied and delicately prepared than we boys had been accustomed to at home, but after the chicken incident neither Isaac, Henry nor I ate anything for which life had to be sacrificed. Mrs. Pitman and Hannah, our housekeeper, contin- ued to eat meat, and to take their tea and coffee. Isaac, Henry, and I, for breakfast and tea, the last meal of the day, drank only sweetened hot water and milk. Isaac, I believe, was considerably past sixty years of age before he indulged in tea or coffee. It was with a surprised smile I received the news, when he was between sixty and seventy, that his custom was, at early rising, to prepare a cup of coffee over a spirit lamp in his bedroom, and partake of it before commencing his day's work. 50 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. Isaac Pitman's reception of the New Church doctrines (1836-7), his expulsion from the Methodist church, and his coinci- dent expulsion from the mastership of the public school, were the factors that, primarily, led to his future specific career. The establishment of his private school, attended, as before intimated, by the children of a higher social and intellectual grade than those he had previously taught, led to his teaching Shorthand to a class of his more advanced boys. My brother probably never thought of teaching the art to the children who attended the pub- lic school, but he no sooner began instructing pupils to whom Shorthand might be useful, than he gladly availed himself of the opportunity of including it among the regular branches of study. The introduction of the art into the school, and my brother's earnest desire to see Shorthand more generally practised, induced him to prepare a small treatise, explanatory of Taylor's system, which both he and I used, sufficient for self-instruction, and which he thought might be sold at the low price of threepence. When the manuscript was completed, he sent it to Mr. Samuel Bagster, asking if he could arrange for its London publication. Nothing could more clearly show the respect in which my brother was held by this gentleman, the head of one of the leading and most exclusive publishing houses of London, than his instant and friendly compliance, accompanied by the suggestion that the little work should bear the imprint of their establishment. Mr. Bagster, however, with a publisher's instinct, submitted the manuscript to a professional reporter, who, after examining it, shrewdly wrote, "The system Mr. Pitman has sent is already in the market. If he will compile a new system, I think he will be more likely to succeed in his object to popularize Shorthand." Teaching the art to a class of boys had proved an effectual eye-opener to the imper- fections and shortcomings of what was then regarded as the best system of Shorthand known, and no sooner had Isaac received the practical advice which accompanied the returned manuscript, than he resolutely set to work to improve on Taylor. And now came the opportunity to use his knowledge of what were the act- ual elements of the language, which he had gained by his diligent study of Walker's Dictionary. Previous authors of Shorthand said, "Write by sound, drop silent and useless letters ;" but the Roman alphabet, on which all the old S3 r stems were based, did not afford the means of so doing, in that there were many sounds in FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE NEW AND TRUE. the language for which no Shorthand signs were provided. Isaac's first improvement was to pair the consonants p b, t d,f v, etc., representing the pair by like signs, but using a light stroke for the first or whispered sound, and a slightly heavier or shaded stroke for the corresponding vocal sound. Signs were also pro- vided for sh as in fish, zh as in measure, th as in bathe, as distinct from th in bath ; also for ng in hang, as distinct from that in hinge etc.; for none of which sounds had signs been provided in pre- vious Shorthand schemes. A new, extended, and sequential scheme of vowels took the place of the old and imperfect a, e, i, o, tt arrangement of the Roman alphabet ; that is, the new system did what any consistent alphabet must do provided signs for all the vowels of the language as shown in the following table : ee as in meet; '' a as in mate; ah as va. father; i i au as in naught; .! i o as in note; i as in mit; e as in met; a as in fat; o as in not; u as in nut; oo as \nfood; - oo as in foot. In addition to these simple vowels, signs were provided for the diphthongs, i as in fight, oi as in boy, ow as in cow, and u as in beauty as distinct from that in but. How ludicrous, from the phonographer's standpoint, seems the rule laid down in the old systems of Shorthand, "Write by sound," when the -glaring insufficiency of their alphabets is compared with the scheme which Isaac Pitman first suggested in his little treatise which was ushered into the world under the title of "Stenographic Soundhand." But the strange hesitancy with which the phonetic principle was at first accepted by the author, and his failure to appreciate the importance of a completed vowel scale, and especially the pairing of the consonants, is curiously shown by the fact that in his first published scheme the conso- nants of his enlarged and systematic alphabet were not presented phonetically, but alphabetically, in Romanic disorder, 6, d,f, g, etc., thus making concession to custom and general ignorance, and in a great measure concealing the philosophical order he had dis- covered and, naturally, would have been proud to display. ISAAC PITMAN'S first attempt to improve and popularize Shorthand, and to realize his wish to bring it within the reach of every schoolboy, was the publication of his "Steno- graphic Soundhand" in 1837, the price of which was fourpence. Before that time, with the exception of a pirated edition of Tay- lor's system, which was sold for three shillings and sixpence, there had been no leading system of Shorthand issued in Eng- land at less than half a guinea or nearly three dollars. Isaac's booklet consisted of two pages of engraving and twelve pages of letter press. Three thousand copies were printed, but it scarcely paid its expenses, for most copies were given away. It was a very unpretentious effort at book-making. The twelve explanatory pages, without even a title page, were placed inside the double- page engraving and stitched in a dull blue "bonnet-board" cover, on the outside of which a white label was pasted containing the title : STENOGRAPHIC SOUNDHAND, By ISAAC PITMAN, LONDON. SAMUEL BAGSTER, At his Warehouse for Bibles, Testaments, Prayer Books, Lexicons, etc., in Ancient and Modern Languages, No. 15 Paternoster Row. Also Sold by the Author, Wotton-under-Edge, and by all booksellers. Price, fourpence. This literary bantling, in its uncouth dress, the stitching and label-pasting of which were done by us boys in his school, was so utterly unlike anything else sold in the aristocratic establishment of Samuel Bagster, that no wonder many stories were told, by inquirers for the little book, of the undisguised contempt with 53 54 SJ& ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. which the clerks in the store treated the literary waif. But these scornful young men probably did not know that Isaac Pitman had earned respectful consideration from their firm, by years of gra- tuitous labor, in correcting their fine and costly Comprehensive Bible, the special publication, which, more than any other, gave character and prestige to their establishment ; still less did they imagine that this despised little scraplet was the forerunner of a great national benefaction; that they might even live, to see the time when millions of Phonographic instruction books would have been sold and studied; that the art would spread and be used wherever the English language was spoken; that tens of thousands of intelligent people would make a daily use of it, and tens of thousands more would earn their living by its daily prac- tise ; that in the distant future the Queen of the realm would recognize its utility, and confer the honor of Knighthood on its inventor; still less could they imagine that the time would ever come when this attempt to improve Shorthand would become so interwoven into the daily commercial, literary, legal, and political work of the world that, were it, by any possibility, withheld from use, even for a single day, the progress of civilization would be grievously hindered. After nearly three years of constant experimenting, in which he habitually conferred with me, and teaching the system to about twenty of the more advanced boys in his academy at Wot- ton-under-Edge, where I was his assistant, and afterwards at Bath, to which city Isaac removed in the summer of 1839, the new, enlarged, and more complete system was published, under the title of Phonography. The scheme was first presented on an elab- orately engraved steel plate, the price of which was one penny. But the enthusiasm of the author did not stop here. The mar- gin of the engraved sheet contained the offer: "Any person may receive lessons from the author, by post, gratuitously. Each les- son must be enclosed in a paid letter. The pupil can write about a dozen verses from the Bible, leaving spaces between the lines for the corrections." The self-sacrificing spirit of Isaac Pitman's career as author, teacher, editor, lithographic-transfer writer, typic experimenter, printer, and publisher, and, in justice to his varied labors and industry, it should be borne in mind that the aptitude necessary to insure success in each phase of his phonetic labors was distinct, one from the other, is probably without parallel, AS INVENTOR. 55 in literary or inventive history. In an analysis of my brother's controlling motive, it is difficult to determine whether altruism, enthusiasm, the assumption of a special mission, or the natural impulse of an inventive mind, was the leading incentive in carry- ing him through his sixty years of unremitting labor, thirty years of which were spent under the benumbing influences of restricted means, akin to actual poverty. The improved Phonography was ushered into existence in January, 1840, as twin sister to England's new Penny Postal Law. The agitation for cheap postage throughout Great Britain began soon after the publication of Stenographic Soundhand. It was in 1837 that Roland Hill's pamphlet appeared, urging the practicability and advantages of a uniform penny rate of postage throughout Great Britain, on letters under half an ounce. The abiding hope and faith that this beneficent project would be suc- cessful determined the form of publication for the new and improved scheme of Phonography, and though its publication was delayed some months, waiting for the passage of the postal law, when the act was passed and the author was able to send his whole system, together with explanatory and recommendatory notices, to any part of the Kingdom for one penny, he availed himself of its privileges with the greatest industry. One of his first efforts to bring his new scheme into notice was sending six copies of his plate to every school teacher in Gloucestershire and Somersetshire, begging the recipient to accept one and distribute the remaining copies to such as would be likely to be interested in the study of Shorthand. The present generation, who have grown accustomed to the privilege and necessity of cheap postage, and who can now send a letter of double the weight of the English limit, and ten times the distance possible in the British Isles, for a "penny," will be interested by the reminder that, little more than half a century ago, the average postage on a single letter was nearly twenty cents. A "single" letter had to be written on one sheet, without regard to its size, but any inclosure, however trifling, doubled the postage. Envelopes were unknown. I very distinctly remem- ber that the letters of my brother Isaac, that reached home from Barton-on-Humber, were uniformly written, with great minute- ness and care, on the largest sized sheets of folded foolscap paper, and it is on record that one of his letters to a friend, on a contro- 56 S/tf ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. versial subject, contained more words than the entire Gospel of Matthew. When cheap postage was first agitated, so Utopian did the project appear to Lord Lichfield, then Postmaster-General, that he declared "that of all visionary schemes he had ever heard, this was the most extravagant." The Duke of Wellington scouted the proposed reduction of postal charges as "undesirable and absurd." To effectually carry out the new postal scheme, the government offered a prize of two hundred pounds for the best method of collecting the pence for the prepaid letters. My brother was one of the competitors, and his practical mind sug- gested the very device that experience has shown to be best. His proposition ran: "Let plates be engraved in small squares of an inch space, the plates being twenty inches by twelve, making 240 squares, the price of which, at one penny a stamp when struck off on paper, will be one pound. The stamps will become equivalent to the current coin of the realm, and remittances of small amounts might be made in them." He further recom- mended, and this was the unlucky stroke of economy that proved his undoing, that the stamps be used for sealing the let- ters or envelope. The inconvenience of cancelling the stamp, when affixed at the back of the letter, gave the much coveted prize to another competitor, who repeated Isaac's idea, but with the suggestion that the stamps be affixed on the face of the letter, at the upper right hand corner, as is the convenient practise of today. An added and personal interest is attached to the beneficent labors of the great postal reformer, Sir Roland Hill, from the fact that his father, Thomas Wright Hill, who had been the head of a large private academy at Tottenham, in which his son Roland had been his assistant, was an ardent friend of the Phonetic reform. At the termination of a four months' course of teaching by my brother Joseph and myself, in Birmingham, in 1844,3 public pho- nographic festival was held, at which Thomas Wright Hill pre- sided, and made an admirable address, in which, speaking as a life- long educator, he strongly urged the necessity and importance of a reform of English spelling, regarding it less as an innovation than a restoration, which would prove of immense educational value. Isaac Pitman was present at the festive gathering, and publicly congratulated his brothers on the result of their labors in Birmingham, where, by four months' instruction, many hundreds of intelligent people had become enthusiastic phonographers. AS INVENTOR. 57 The phonetic system of writing, developed mainly through the labors of Isaac Pitman, may be regarded both as a discovery and an invention. While no claim can be made that he was the discoverer of the true principles of alphabetic representation, or was sole contriver of the first philosophic scheme of brief writing, it is, however, quite fair to claim that his sixty years of assiduous labor brought system and order out of the previously existing chaos ; and that he originated and pioneered the movement that gave to the English-speaking race its first practical scheme of philosophic Shorthand ; and that he labored with more untiring- devotion to pave the way for the introduction of a rational, typic orthography than any who had preceded him. Phonetics as a science, and Phonetic Shorthand and Phonotypy as arts, had only an embryotic existence prior to the labors of Isaac Pitman. A volume might be filled with a narrative of attempts to construct Stenographic systems of writing, which, judged by the knowledge and requirements of today, would be a record of deficiencies and inconsistencies that would be interesting chiefly as showing their shortcomings and crudities. These schemes had their use in preparing the way for Phonography, but they were, without exception, so insufficient as schemes of alphabetic writing, and so inadequate and complex as a means of verbatim reporting, that only those of exceptional endowment, great perseverance and extraordinary memory could so far master their difficulties and shortcomings as to make practical use of any of them. Another record might show the attempts that have been made towards a true alphabetic standard as applied to the printed language. This would be a narrative of imperfect investigations, incorrect conclusions, and a strange disregard of the demands of the scholar and the practical requirements ot the typemaker, the printer, and the reader. These attempts at alphabetic reform were however of great value, but they were suggestions rather than completed schemes, and as substitutes for the existing method were far too imperfect to be generally accepted and too unphilosophic to survive. Isaac Pitman was the first to devise a practical scheme of writing based upon a natural classification of the elementary sounds of language, using for their representation the briefest geometric signs that were in natural correspondence with the sounds they were employed to represent. His scheme was the 58 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. first that was philosophic, facile, and brief. He was the first to recognize and harmonize the natural laws of language, and of graphic forms best adapted for their visual representation ; that is, in recognizing the correspondence between classes and groups of sounds, and the geometric signs that, naturally, would most appropriately represent them on paper. He was first to recog- nize that the organs of speech were products of nature, and could not be changed, and that geometric lines were entities that could not be altered or increased, but that human language was artificial, being a product of civilization ; therefore there was a point at which a strictly philosophic correspondence between signs and sounds must yield to expediency that is, to the neces- sities of the English language in particular. How appropriately and admirably this necessity is met, is known to every phonog- rapher. Like sounds are represented by like signs, as far as practicable; the briefest signs are used to represent the most frequent sounds, and less facile signs are used for the representa- tion of rarer sounds. Phonography is unlike and superior to any previous system of Shorthand, in that it was the first to recognize and respect the linguistic and grammatical construction of the language, by providing not only for its single, but for its double and treble consonants, and its groups of sounds, used in its frequently-recurring consonantal combinations, all of which are provided for, according to their relative frequency, by a scheme of easily-written appendages, consisting of circles, hooks, and loops, so that two, three, four, and even ten and eleven, con- sonants can be expressed with distinctness by a single inflection of the pen. Systems of Shorthand, previous to Phonography, provided only a set of signs adapted to the consonants of the Roman alphabet, and with that they stopped, and any systematic scheme of initial and final appendages to meet the requirements of the language, such as is so admirably worked out in Phonog- raphy, was quite unknown. To stop short with an alphabet that provided little beyond substitutes for the consonants of the alphabet, was found adequate to the representation of but a frac- tion of the simpler words of the language. Difficult and oft- recurring words were provided for by symbolic or arbitrary marks or contractions, which had to be constantly augmented by the reporter to meet the deficiencies of his stenographic scheme The notes of a reporter would, of course, be illegible to all save to slS INVENTOR. 59 the writer himself, and the transcription of his notes by another, as is now so frequently done, was a convenience unknown prior to the invention of Phonography. The geometric forms that are available as signs for sounds, consist only of a right line and a curve, the latter struck in an evolute and an involute direction, and to be entirely legible they can be used in only a very limited number of directions, namely, as a horizontal, a vertical, and an oblique line to the right and left, midway between an upright and a horizontal line. But the inventor of Phonography found that, in actual practise, a stroke a full eighth of an inch in length, the normal or standard size, could, without danger of illegibility, be made half-length and also double-length, when used to represent an added sound or sounds with which the primary sound naturally and custom- arily combined. The available stenographic material furnished by a right and a curved line was thus invested with a three-fold power. It was also found that the signs had a two-fold value when made light, and when shaded, that is, slightly thickened. This fact was availed of by the inventor to distinguish the two classes of consonant sounds, the light strokes being used to represent whispered consonants, and the shaded signs to indicate their corresponding voiced sounds. The two classes of signs, right lines and curves, were employed with nice discrimination, in that the inventor used straight lines to represent the explosive sounds, as/, /, ch, k, etc., and when shaded, their corresponding vocals, 3, d,j, g, etc.; \\ II // __ p b td chj k / The curves were employed with equal uniformity to repre- sent the continuant sounds; VV (( )) f r thtz s 2. With these sounds the regular pairing of consonants, as whispers and vocals, stops ; and coincidentally a regular pairing of available signs is exhausted ; this, therefore, is the point at which philosophic order yields to expediency, and to the special requirements of English speech. L, r, m, n, and ng, have no 60 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. corresponding whispered sounds in English, but being of fre- quent occurence, are represented by the facile and convenient signs ; / 7* m n ng The coalescents, u> and y, are sounds ranking midway between vowels and consonants, being more obstructed than vowels and less so than consonants. Being vocal sounds they are represented by the shaded signs ; s r The aspirate h, an unobstructed, audible whisper, is heard in English speech preceding any and all of the vowels, as well as the coalescents w and y. Its actual sound depends on the vowel it precedes, for it is an audible breathing through the position of the vocal organs assumed to pronounce the vowel or coalescent that follows it. Though less of a sound than a vowel, it needs a stroke or consonantal representation, as it is frequently used both preceded and followed by one or more vowels, (as in Ohio), and no other simpler or more convenient sign remains than h f . A brief and philosophic Stenography, as to its consonants, is. thus based on the employment of 1. Straight and Curved Line,s, 2. Light and Shaded, 3. Of Three Lengths, 4. Written in Three Positions, with respect to the base line, struck in Horizontal, Vertical, and two Oblique directions. These signs are derived from the Square and Circle, shown in the following diagrams, which give all the geometrical signs that are practical for brief, legible, and facile writing. The middle lines in the diagrams show the relative length AS INVENTOR. 6r of the phonographic letters, the double and half-lengths being used to represent added sounds. The following diagram shows that each simple character may have an initial and a final hook; each character also admits, as an appendage, an initial and final circle, loop, and an enlarged hook. Each sign has a three-fold value according to its length, and a three-fold value as to its position with reference to the base line of writing. It will be thus seen that the elementary sounds of language being discovered, classified, and named, the problem was the most practicable adaptation of signs for their representation, having reference to the nature of the sounds and their relative frequency in speech. These were the problems that Isaac Pitman and his army of coadjutors, the wide world over, helped to work out in sixty years of experimenting. The tables following this chapter are illustrations of the three stages of phonographic evolution; showing the "Steno- graphic Sound-Hand" of 1837; the fuller, but incomplete, and, from to-day's standpoint, the mistaken development of "Phonog- raphy" of 1840, and the fully developed "Phonography" of today. Those who are familiar with the history of Shorthand, from the days of Elizabeth, will see in Isaac Pitman's first scheme a great improvement upon previous systems of brief writing, while those whose judgment of what a philosophic Shorthand should be is based upon a knowledge of the comparatively perfect Phonography of today, will be amazed and amused at the crudity of the author's first embryotic attempt. 62 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. It is a curious incident in Stenographic history, that the exact order of Isaac Pitman's simple- vowel scheme, and to a great extent the pairing of the consonants, was anticipated in one system of Shorthand, namely, that by Holdsworth and Aldridge, joint authors of "Natural Shorthand," published in 1766. Isaac Pitman was unaware of the existence of this system, and did not become acquainted with it till many years after he had re-discovered the natural order as well as the best represen- tation of the sounds of speech, as presented in Phonography. We have special reason for referring to this interesting system, because we ourselves did scant justice to the authors in our "History of Shorthand" (1857). At that time we had not seen a copy of the rare and beautifully-engraved original work, and wrote from information received second-hand. It was the first brief system of writing in which the phonetic principle and a full alphabet were recognized; but as a practical Shorthand, it was an entire failure, in consequence of the ill-adaptation of signs to represent the sounds of the language, and its failure to pro- vide for the double and treble consonants, and the frequently recurring initial and terminal sounds peculiar to English speech, all of which are so fully and conveniently represented in the Phonographic scheme. Atf intelligent person, on commencing the study of Phonog- raphy, is likely to experience a lively sense of admira- tion on discovering how seemingly perfect is its adapta- tion of the simplest signs to the representation of sounds, how admirable and facile are its abbreviating appendages of hooks, circles, and loops, and how eminently reasonable seems to be the use to which every stroke is applied. It may be said that geometrical lines, such as are employed in Phonograph}', have no actual relation to the sounds of speech, any more than they have to storms or clouds. Storms and clouds may, indeed, be suggestively indicated by lines; but sounds are things that can neither be seen nor felt, and we recognize their momentary existence only when they reach the brain through the ear. When, however, we realize the possibility of using dots, lines, and curves, which, by correlative agreement, may be made to stand for and recall certain sounds, we find ourselves in posses- sion of a means by which spoken words may be represented to the eye, and by which they can be perpetuated and transmitted from one person to another, even when widely separated by time or space. Words, formulated as thoughts, may, it is true, be pictorially represented. This was the primitive method adopted by all semi-civilized peoples, and is, in reality, the only direct mode of visualizing thought. We might, for example, picture the thought conveyed in the words, "The Highland shepherd, on the bleak hills, is watching his flock," and a pic- torial representation might record the thought; but the picture would not convey this or any precise form of words; and there are innumerable thoughts and facts which may be expressed in 63 64 SfR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. words, that could not be pictorially or symbolically represented; hence, the importance and necessity of some means of recording facts, ideas, and emotions by picturing the words employed for their vocal expression. Writing, in the present stage of civilization, is as necessary and important as speech. To answer the needs of the present time it must be legible and brief. Now reason shows and experience proves that the best possible forms for a facile and legible representation of consonant sounds are short right lines and slightly bent curves. These are the best, because they are the briefest to write and the most readily distinguished when written, and it is impossible to conceive of any other forms that would as well answer the required conditions. And it is a fortunate coincidence that there are just as many of these signs, when made light and shaded, as are needed to represent the consonant sounds of our language. The unobstructed voiced sounds, known as vowels, form a separate and distinct class of .sounds. In the Roman alphabet not one-half of those heard in English speech are provided for by the letters a, , 3 \ ^ tent cleaned strand punster spinsters The principles of abbreviation and their systematic applica- tion were only very gradually evolved by years of patient experimenting on the part of the author and thousands of ear- nest students in all parts of the world, so that now, on examin- ing the early editions of the system, one is surprised to find in what an imperfect and fragmentary manner these convenient and useful principles of abbreviation were at first recognized and applied. There is no more necessary abbreviation, for example, than that required for the final t, heard in the past tense of a numerous class of verbs, as sip, pick, cash, etc., and d, as heard in the past tense of rib, bag, bathe, etc., and there is no more beautiful principle of abbreviation in Phonography than that known as the halving principle, by which T or D, according as the letter is light or shaded, is added to the value of a consonant stroke by making it half its normal length. This necessity was not even recognized in Isaac Pitman's first published scheme, and only partially and not uniformly applied in the 1840 edition of Phonography. On one occasion, when instructing a class in Phonography, using the edition of 1843, I was explaining to what letters the halving principle was applied, and why it was not applied to other letters, the halved form of which repre- sented other sounds than *, or d, when a lazy pupil said: "Why not apply the principle to all the letters and save us the trouble of memorizing the exceptions?" Why not, indeed! It took 68 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. years to establish this convenient improvement, it cost thousands of dollars in unsalable books, and gave rise to endless complaints and discontent on the part of those who, having learned the system, had to change their habit if they would conform to the rule of the progressives. In like manner, my brother Joseph was explaining to a class the principle on which the vowels in a word might be omitted and yet be indicated by position, without actually inserting them, when a pupil said; "If you omit the vowel, why not join the consonant outlines, and thus save the time and trouble of lifting the pen before starting for the next word?" Though the idea was not new, the complaint gave rise to a series of experiments that resulted in a distinct and abbre- viated style of phonographic phrase-writing, which was first worked out, to a practical end, by my brother, Joseph Pitman, Mr. T. A. Reed, and myself, and proved to be a means by which a degree of brevity, quite unlooked-for on the part of the author, was obtained without any sacrifice of legibility. There are few, even among intelligent phonographers of the present day, \vho have other than a very imperfect idea of the vast amount of experimenting, discussion, inconvenience, and expense that have attended the evolution of Phonography. It might enhance the phonographer's interest in his favorite art if he recalled the fact that the forms he uses and the theory he accepts for the representation of speech, seemingly so perfectly natural because it is so facile and convenient, is but the culmination and fruition of a series of experiments, changes, and improvements which were commenced, not with Isaac Pitman, but in the very childhood of civilization, and which have been uninterruptedly continued to the present time. From the earliest pictorial and hieroglyphic symbols to the latest phonographic phraseography, it has been an unending series of experiments and improve- ments, and each step has been received with more or less of hesitancy and distrust, because of the inconvenience attending a change of habit. The development of Phonography affords another illustration of the general rule that the simplest, most convenient, and most reasonable way of doing anything is usually the last to come, but when the right thing is accepted, it seems amazing that the inferior and imperfect one should ever have been tolerated, much less loved and tenaciously adhered to. PHONOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION. 69 (and a, aw, ' &, i - wn0. >f\. B D F Cra ffe J K L 01 R f, 'Ji, a&. ?/ ,awd, & / f%~ aM, cUuwtJJ?SZrt;&, t/ /lets r *tf, S: J J- Z wneie, urntefo, enaynae, ontui', ttnatt, , v, &tt*~ v/ face ^, O . /vum O aw* 1 r *\ -e^t az&zf ftek T ^i/ /A n i. MtM,, yo SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. PHONOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION. Phonography JoJ^O p \ \ B F ^ V. r Vowels Xron fr Short P l \ \ U fl ^L ^. rl e - 1 it fr ^ ^v rr pr N N br a et If ^ ^^ lr Ip N* X Ib ah/ . J at rf ^ ^ rr rp \ \ n ft ^ ^ rd an, "1 - at pt \ \ td TS ( ( TE - - vJt T 1 I D thl C C ihl 00 _ . oot tkr (\ ) thr u r f dl Double Parrels Ith \j C Uh lr 1 1 dr ^ l 1 yi rtlv ^ ) rib It i I Id 5 ) ) z yd H -. ye rl j J rd s o o z yah ya, in ) > dn &S J ^ ?ff yau - yau shl r r *M CH / / J- yo y shr j j xhr eTil / S jl .- yoo Islv c c Ith yoo cTtr / / jr rah j j r*k We c M Uk / / lj sht ^ i vhd mi c c *re reTi / y rj shn / ' *hn vral c wa L r // Z, ckt / / jd wan 1 1 - vro 2m ^ / rl K G In ^ Q rm rn wo > ' wu U -- - gl M ^ Woo , 14VO kr e-- ^~ S r ml ^ ^ nl I V 1 ai Ik 3 lg mr *-v ^ nr (to ,\ A on. mp ^ ( nt rl = a r S Treble Sorrels mt I C nd fr - - Sd n < 1 Woi md 1 c nci kit r r < NG ^ r n J yrat . e ,. YfOU TIM - ^ Jl n@k - ^ hr PHONOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION. 73 74 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. Initial and Final Appendages, Halving, and Lengthening of Curves. s ss &ss s/ sts str sirs n ns tion tioni s-tions-tioiis Vo V *-/ V. ss-f st-f V V. V V, a V v s-fl V, ft sfr f-t Vo s-f-t V. ss-ft st-f-t fl-t s-fl-t v V. Vo -f-tr SS-f-tf st-ftr V. V- V, V. Vo fl-tr &-fl-tr ff-tr s-frtr V, lo "\ s *> of HE promulgation of Pho- nography in Great Brit- ain, by a band of ardent young men, moved by an enthu- siasm born of the conviction of the importance of the phonetic principle as a factor in education and general progress, began in 1842. My brother Joseph, who was four years my senior, was the pioneer lecturer and teacher. I joined him early in 1843, and Thomas Allen Reed soon after- wards. Within a few years the band of helpers in the new cru- sade included Henry Pitman, George Withers, G. R. Haywood, W. George Ward (afterwards mayor of Nottingham ), Timothy Walker, W. E. Woodward (who 75 76 STtf ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. had been T. A. Reed's tutor in a private academy), J. H. Mog- ford, H. S. Brooks, C. Sully, F. Carson, the philosophic, critical, and aristocratic Mr. Edgar, and J. Hornsby. All these, with the exception of the last named, were young men who had received a good English and, in some cases, a classical education. Mr. Hornsby had been, from his early youth, a worker in a cotton- mill, but having been taught Phonography in one of the free classes, he became so enthused by its philosophy and utility that he abandoned his calling to become a promulgator of the art. He confined his labors to the more intelligent of the working classes in the populous towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, from among whom he formed large classes, at a low fee, and taught the art with great success. All the lecturers and teachers named became, for a longer or shorter period, devoted missionaries in what they regarded as an educational and semi-philanthropic movement, teaching Phonography, more or less gratuitously, and advocating a reform in English spelling which would result in a great shortening of the time of children in learning to read, and tend to bring the elements of education within the reach of all. These literary reformers usually worked in pairs, and almost every city and town of importance in Great Britain was visited between 1842 and 1852. To the foregoing list must be added the honored name of T. P. Barkas, of Newcastle, afterwards known as Alderman Barkas. He confined his labors to his native place, but labored for years, with unflagging zeal, in teaching Phonog- raphy to large classes gratuitously, until it was said that even ragged xirchins of the place were in the habit of chalking up moral apothegms, in correctly written Phonography, on the bare walls and board fences about the town. At the earnest wish of my brother Isaac, I came to the United States late in 1852; and, at that time, I was the only remaining lecturer and teacher who had, for nearly ten years, made the dissemination of Phonography and Phonetics successful enough to yield a frugal living. Other teachers, after laboring for a few months, and some for two or three years, accepted posi- tions as reporters, or engaged in other callings. There were two of these early apostles whose long, though occasionally inter- rupted labors in spreading Phonography, and in the public advo- cacy of the phonetic reform, were especially earnest and note- worthy. My brother Henry, who, with intermissions devoted to EARL Y PROMULGA TION OF PHONOGRAPHY. 77 the advocacy of other reforms, has been an active phonetic mis- sionary for more than half a century. My brother Frederick became the London publisher of his brother's phonographic books, and a publisher of music, by which he made a fortune. My brother Henry, with less worldly wisdom, but with a wide- embracing thought and affection for humanity, has been a con- stant and faithful helper in many ways to make people wiser, healthier, and happier, and his long-continued devotion to a life of usefulness, though often repaid by rude rebuffs, has been as constant as it is admirable. Another of the early pioneers was George Withers. He was a nephew of Isaac Pitman's first wife. He was well educated ; and if an intelligent person could be, George Withers was a fanatical advocate of the phonetic reform. He was not sufficiently practical to make the teaching of Phonog- raphy yield more than a scant and precarious living. After a few years spent in phonetic propagandisin, he became private secre- tary to Mr., afterwards Sir, James Matheson, M. P. This gentle- man, who had been a merchant and made a great fortune by selling opium to the Chinese had purchased the island of Lewis, the largest of the Hebrides, containing over five hundred square miles of land. An incident illustrating the independence and nobleness of character of my friend Withers is worth recalling. Sir James lived in a fine mansion in London, and the family employed a retinue of servants. On one occasion, from low- ering of wages, restriction of privileges, or some other cause, not now remembered, the whole household of domestics struck for their rights. In the dilemma, Withers was appealed to by the mistress of the establishment. To the consternation of the family, he sided with the domestics, from a conviction that they had rea- son and justice on their side, and the misunderstanding was set- tled in their favor ; but it cost my friend his position before many months had passed, when he again took to the phonetic field. Phonography, as a time and labor-saving art, has now grown into such a mercantile necessity, both in this country and in England, and its practise is so generally regarded, from a utili- tarian and business standpoint, that it will be difficult for the present generation of phonographers to realize how much its early dissemination was an educational, philanthropic, and mis- sionary enterprise, usually accompanied by incessant labor, self- sacrifice, often privation. In its earl) 7 days, Phonography was 78 S/A ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. never severed from its association with the much needed reform of English spelling, and the consequent simplification of element- ary education, that would bring its benefits and blessings within the reach of all. During these early years my brother Isaac would again and again remind us : "Do not fail, after your pay classes are formed, to give a lecture on the phonetic reform ; circulate documents and the Phonetic Journal, and show the necessity and importance of phonetic printing." Speaking from my own experience, and from the knowledge I have of the labors of others, the early advocacy of Phonography and the phonetic principle was not undertaken for gain or merely to earn a living, but was engaged in from a sincere love of the art, a desire to see its use extended, and a strong conviction of the educational bene- fits that would result from the adoption of the phonetic principle in writing and printing. Our motives in spreading Phonography may be inferred from the fact that where we taught one pupil for pay, we instructed five, on an average, without any thought of remuneration. In large towns and cities, where our stay extended to months, much of my time and labor were given to teaching Phonetic Reading to classes of ignorant adults, prisoners, and pauper children. This was done to test the practicability of Pho- notypy, and to show in how brief a period the ignorant and the young could be taught to read by means of a consistent alphabet. In Manchester, Sheffield, Preston, single handed, and in Glasgow, with the assistance of my brother Henry, permanent Sunda)*- schools for adults of both sexes were established, where phonetic reading, lectures, and vocal music were made instructive and interesting exercises. Our custom was to begin our labors in a place with an intro- ductory lecture in a public hall hired for the occasion. Admis- sion to the lectures was by card only, which could be obtained at the booksellers' stores gratuitously. The lectures were announced by tastefully printed handbills, which were displayed in the shop windows, and by advertisements in the newspapers, when any were published in the place. I made it a point to have these handbills printed with care and on good paper, and I never per- mitted one to be printed without seeing one or more proofs, and the exceptions were rare when I did not insist upon many changes in the display lines before they were made to accord with my ideas of good taste. I have at first annoyed, and afterwards EARLY PROMULGATION OF PHONOGRAPHY. 79 received the thanks of, many a compositor for showing him the difference between a tasteful and a vulgar use of type. In addi- tion to handbills, we liberally circulated phonographic docu- ments that gave an explanation of the principles and uses of the art, and contained the opinions of leading men as to its merit and advantages. Our lectures were uniformly attended by large and intelligent audiences, and, not unfrequently, were presided over by the mayor or some leading, influential citizen. During my phonographic teaching career in Great Britain, which extended from the spring of 1843 to December of 1852, I lectured and taught in the following cities and towns of Great Britain, making a stay of from one to six months in each place : London, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Nottingham, Hull, York, Lancaster, Leicester, Preston, Derby, Chesterfield, Mansfield, Coventry, Whitehaven, Carlisle, Southampton, Winchester, Plym- outh, Portsmouth, Penzance, Truro, Glasgow, Dumfries, Sterling, Dundee, Montrose, Kilmarnock, Perth, Aberdeen, Dublin, and Bel- fast. During this period I was assisted, first by G. R. Haywood, then by George Ward, afterwards by my brother Henry. These worthy helpers remained with me for periods varying from a few months to three years, in the case of my brother Henry. In visit- ing many places I was, professionally, alone, being accompanied only by my wife and infant daughter Agnes. My opening lec- ture never failed to be a trying ordeal to me. During the ten years I devoted to the spread of the phonetic reform in England, the first lecture was preceded by two days of unrest and misery. The day of the lecture especially, I suffered from depression of spirits, that, even to this distant day, it is painful to recall, but the instant I faced my audience it all disappeared. From the moment I opened my mouth and looked into the glad eyes of my audi- ence, I was not only at ease, but felt as if possessed by a sense of exaltation in the performance of a pleasurable duty; and if the hall was not too large and the audience too numerous to be under my control, which was the case on only a few occasions, my lecture was successful. I had youth and health in my favor, and my powers of endurance must have been of a staying quality, for, at that time, I worked and walked and taught fifteen to six- teen hours each day. I never knew fatigue, nor did I know aught of ache or ailment of any kind. My living expenses for many years were not more than a dollar a week. When my brother 8o SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. Henry was my partner, our united living expenses were uni- formly between six and seven shillings per week. It was a prac- tise, from which I never deviated on the day of my lecture, to touch neither food nor drink after my mid-day meal till after my lecture. This I did that my voice might be clear. I never had occasion to regret this abstinence but once. My opening lecture at Winchester was delivered while I was residing at Southamp- ton. These cities are ten miles apart, and I walked this distance after dinner; and I distinctly recall the vexation I felt during my lecture from a lack of my usual energy. My audience seemed too much for me, and less sympathetic than usual. I had not then discovered the limit of my endurance, and I attributed my comparative failure on this occasion to stupidity, when in reality it was exhaustion and starvation. Boarding houses, in the American sense, were not known in England. In each place we visited, we engaged two rooms in a respectable private house centrally situated, usually at from half to a guinea per week, which included service. In our sitting- room we lived, taught private pupils and small classes. Our habits of life were regular and frugal. If we visited a theatre we sat in the gallery. When we traveled it was always in third-class carriages, which, at that time, were usually open, breast-high trucks, without a top, in which passengers sat on nine inch boards laterally placed, with their backs to the locomotive, to avoid being blinded by dust and cinders. Parliament ultimately interfered with this barbarous attempt to drive people into sec- ond and first-class carriages, by compelling the companies to put tops to these windowless, penny-a-mile cattle pens. On commencing in a new place, after engaging our rooms, I would advance perhaps half a guinea to the landlady with directions somewhat as follows: "We are simple in our living, and shall give no further trouble if you will let us have well cooked oatmeal porridge for breakfast, with a bowl of milk for each of us, taken the night before and allowed to stand for cream ; for dinner we take potatoes with milk, and a fruit pudding for dessert ; and wheaten bread and butter or toast, with fruit and tea for our last meal. We shall take this every day till we ask for a change," which we never did in any place or in any particular, except in a change of fruit according to its season. We had acquired the habit of assimilating and enjoying simple food from EARLY PROMULGATION OF PHONOGRAPHY. 81 living with Isaac, and we now continued a like frugal dietary from choice and as a duty. It would have robbed it of its charm to admit it was from necessity. Our living was so exceedingly fru- gal that, in the estimation of some of our landladies, it seemed not entirely respectable. On one occasion the comment of one of them, made to a friend of ours, happened to reach us. It was to the effect that, though we lodged and dressed and acted like gentlemen, we lived like beggars. It is perhaps worth recording, as an argument in favor of a simple diet and a resulting healthy appetite, that the gustatory enjoyment of this fare must have been great, for, half a century later, I retain distinct associations of our stay in certain places, say Lancaster, for instance, for the glorious red currant and rasp- berry pudding we reveled in for our daily dessert ; and Carlisle is associated with its admirably-cooked apple pudding, that daily graced and then disappeared from our festive board. It would convey a wrong impression if I dismissed this pudding episode without saying that, at the time, the fact would have possessed no importance beyond the temporary enjoyment which came from the gratification of an unvitiated appetite. Among the lessons we were taught in our youth, and which were confirmed by living with Isaac, was that of giving little thought to matters of eating, drinking and dress, and not to make them topics of conversation, except in illustration of a principle. The mention of Lancaster and Carlisle recalls our pleasant stay and successful labors in those cities. Lancaster, having no manufacturing industries, was not large enough to give us a free class, but I very distinctly recall the exceptionally intelligent private classes we taught. In one family of wealth and refinement I instructed a class of five ladies. They were not titled people, but of an old, wealthy and aristocratic stock, that showed the sweet graces and fine effects of generations of culture. I remember, too, that it was in Lancaster I taught a private class, each member paying his half-guinea fee, for a course of twelve lessons, and, as was our custom, I continued to instruct it freely, as long as I remained in the place. At the close of the lessons they insisted on my accepting a silk purse, which, on opening at our rooms, I found contained five golden guineas, at that time, and still more so now, a very rare and highly -valued coin. Our stay in Carlisle, as might be said of our sojoxirn in 82 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. almost every place, has its distinct associations. We made an early visit to its grand old cathedral, dating back, I believe, to the eleventh century. Some religious paintings on the walls had been whitewashed over, but at the time of our visit were partly recovered ; but my eyes were fastened on the finely-carved canopied stalls of the choir, the finials of which had been uni- formly sawed off, giving them a strange, stunted appearance. On inquiring of the verger, we were told that these mutilations were the work of Cromwell's iconoclasts ! Cromwell was one of my heroes, but the sight of this Carlisle mutilation, the skilled work of pious monks, terribly shocked me. I had no radical objection to his chopping off the head of a faithless King, but to destroy the finest carving in this grand old cathedral, simply because it was a thousand times more beautiful than anything they possessed in their barn-like conventicals, or could appreciate, seemed an unpardonable barbarism. Among my pupils in Carlisle I taught the grand-daughter of Archdeacon Paley, who will be remembered as the author of the "Evidences of Chris- tianity," and who had been Archdeacon of Carlisle. She was a lady of great intelligence and refinement, and seemed quite charmed with the philosophy and utility of Phonography. Carlisle, too, is remembered from the fact that, while there (1847) I wrote in lithographic style, and published for the use of my pupils, what I think was the first reading book of selected matter in Phonography. It was called the Phonographic Bijou. Though I never repeated a lecture, there was a general simi- larity in the choice of matter and the order of its arrangement. The introductory part might deal with the possible universality, nobility, and richness of our language and literature ; the impor- tance of an alphabetic representation, and its dissemination by printing, as the prime element of civilization; a sketch of repre- sented language, from the pictorial, symbolic, and the hiero- glyphic methods, to the Romanic alphabet. The current system of writing, its length and shortcomings, were referred to, and the absurdities of our orthography, were always made a telling feature. Illustrations, rapidly and distinctly written on the blackboard, never failed to put an audience in good humor. How could it be otherwise, when, for example, after showing how varied were the powers of every letter in the alphabet, and how numerous were the ways in which each sound of the language EARL Y PROMULGA TION OF PHONOGRAPHY. 83 was represented, we gravely proposed to spell scissors by the combination psozzyrrzz ? This was but one of the eighty-one million ways in which we might spell the word, every one of which would be justified by the spelling of other words : a truly orthographic jumble for sizers, or sizurs, but justified by the s in psalm, the i in women, z in buzz, ur in myrrh, and z in whizz. Sometimes we took time to be exact, and showed, quoting from the tables given in Dr. Ellis' "Plea for Phonetic Spelling," that the sound of s was represented in nineteen different ways, i in thirty-seven, z in eighteen, e or u (the sound represented by o in the spelling of scissors) in not less than thirty-six, r in ten, and the final z, as we before stated, in eighteen different ways. If the varied powers of these letters are multiplied one by the other, the total number of spellings will be 81,997,920 different, justifia- ble forms, in which the word scissors might be written. The audience would now be ready to listen to an explanation of our proposed phonographic substitute, which, being strictly phonetic, would be free from the absurdities and time-wasting perplexities of the common spelling, and in which, instead of employing lengthy forms for the representation of sounds, as in longhand, the briefest geometrical signs were used, thus securing facility and speed in writing, and as each sign was used for but one and always the same sound, the letters of the phonographic alphabet were as unchanging as are the powers of the Arabic numerals, and Phonography, therefore, was always reliable, cer- tain, and legible. An explanation of the phonographic alphabet followed as I referred to a large and well-painted chart of the vowels and simple consonants, which was suspended immediately behind me. My exposition of Phonography was made interest- ing and effective in the degree in which I succeeded in turning my audience, at this stage of my lecture, into a class, and this I invariably did. It is pleasant to recall the intelligent enthu- siasm that was, as a rule, enkindled by these early phonographic lectures. When the alphabet of consonant signs had been briefly explained, I made it a point to repeat certain of the phonographic signs on the blackboard, as \ p, t, k, ^ m, - n, so that they would be memorized, then to show how they were joined, and I proceeded no further nor faster than I knew the majority of my audience followed me. After this, the vowel signs would be written after the letter t, and perhaps after the horizontal letter 4 Sf# ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. k. Then I would make the letter ~" m, and below it write "the first-place heavy vowel," after naming it; I would suggest that probably some of my auditors would know the word I had written, and some one would be sure to say me. Then I would add a / and again intimate that probably some one could name the word I had written. Some one would be sure to show their ability by answering met. Then would occur the lecturer's opportunity to enlist the interest of all who had not blundered. I would recall the phonetic principle before explained and insist that if me spelled me, and the phonetic principle allowed no change, m-e-t would not be met, but and numerous voices, newly awakened to a recognition of the phonetic principle, would answer meet. Then would follow many other examples of simple words, phonograph ically written, and the lecturer would have his entire audience reading selected words as fast as they were written, and people were delighted to find that they could read with ease words thus phonographically expressed. These black- board exercises were followed, and the lecture concluded, by illustrations of phonographic reporting. I would read a passage from a book, leaving the 'audience to name the page, at the rate of 120 to 130 words per minute, to my brother Henry. The cor- rect reading of the passage from his phonographic notes always called forth an approving cheer. To show that phonographic reporting and reading were not an effort of memory, I would read a passage backward, then when Henry read his notes back- ward, the audience would get the sense of the passage, and at the same time a proof that it was the legibility of the system, and not memory, that was concerned in deciphering it. The reporting experiments were always received with interest and delight, for my younger brother showed an intelligence and skill that were admirable. A brief announcement of the classes we intended to open concluded the lecture, when the president, if we had one, would be sure to make a few eulogistic and commendatory remarks, and then would follow a rush to the platform to buy the Manual that explained the wonderful system ! In places that contained an industrial population, it was our uniform custom, after our pay classes were formed, and we had organized classes, as far as practicable, at the private schools, to announce another public lecture (usually given in the Sunday- school room of some leading church) for the purpose of forming EARL Y PROMULGA TION OF PHONOGRAPH Y. 85 a free class for the intelligent among the working people. In the manufacturing towns of the north of England these classes were very numerously attended. The announcement was made at the lecture that, as certain expenses would necessarily be incurred for printing the lecture bills, lighting the room, and for janitor's attendance, if each pupil paid one penny each evening to meet this expense, we would be only too happy to give them the necessary instruction to make them practical phonographers. This was always answered by a cheer and the resulting classes were always large and teaching them became the pleasantest duties of our life. There was really very little generosity in our offer. These free classes, with few exceptions, paid all expenses, and the profit on the sale of the books was a welcome addition to our earnings, and increased the remittances we were able to send to our hard-pressed brother Isaac. These classes were attended by pupils from sixteen to sixty years of age, and they varied in number from fifty to two hundred, and even more, according to the size of the place. Occasionally, but rarely, there would be a sprinkling of young women. The classes met on two evenings of the week, which gave the pupils time for practise between the lessons, and seldom did a pupil present himself without bringing a written exercise showing several hours of studious application. Of those who were instructed in these free classes some became professional reporters. One of the most skilled and accurate reporters I have known in this country, who came from Scotland, told me that his father, who was his instructor, had been a pupil in our Aberdeen free class. This reporter attributed his dexterity to the fact that when he was a youth of fourteen, and up to the time he left home, he was accustomed to report the Sunday ser- mons, which he afterwards read to his mother, whose defective hearing prevented her from attending the services. These free classes had a delight all their own. The spirit that prevailed seemed to be an intelligent excitement. The explanation of the system, with illustrations on the blackboard, the simultaneous reading and writing of words and sentences, made the hour pass all too soon. The gradual unfolding of the system was received with delight and surprise, and as each new principle was explained, the pleasure and satisfaction of the pupils would be shown by broad smiles, and the more receptive ones seemed ready to spring from their seats ! I have again and 86 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. again heard from pupils at the close of the lesson such exclama- tions as " I never enjoyed anything so much in my life! " From many cities and towns we were not allowed to depart without some demonstration on the part of our pupils ; presents, written addresses, and a tea-drinking soiree or phonetic festival, with music, appropriate speech-making, congratulations, and good wishes, would pleasantly and affectionately close our labors in the place. ISAAC PITMAN'S habit was to rise at four, and never later than five, o'clock summer and winter. His toilet and devo- tional reading being over, he was always at his desk at six o'clock, whether he worked at home or in his office, which was more than a mile from his resi- dence. The mere statement that he worked from six in the morning till nine and ten at night, with brief intervals f o r meals, every day in the year, that for fifty years he rarely, if ever, took a holiday, and that he scarcely ever partook of a meal away from home, save when on a lecturing journey, conveys but an imperfect estimate of his daily work, unless it be borne in mind that his life was a succession of duties which, to the average man, would be felt to be an unremit- ting strain of head, eye, and hand. Those who are familiar with lithographic-transfer writing, of which Isaac Pitman did such an immense amount, know that it requires a steady, even, and deli- cate touch, secured only by a concentration of the powers of the hand, eye, and brain, and an absolutely tranquil mind, to produce the precise and satisfactor}' results shown in my brother's works. Preparing, proof-reading, and publishing a constant succession of new books, conducting his two or three monthly magazines, keeping up with his immense correspondence, and attending, unaided, as he did, to every detail, he lived a life of unvarying, calm, persistent, almost automatic labor, that has rarely, if ever, been equalled. In 1849, after fifteen years of this kind of work, when attending a phonetic festival at Nottingham, addressing an 87 88 S/fi ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. assembly of those who had been instructed in Phonography by my brother Joseph and myself, Isaac Pitman said : "I am sometimes told that I shall wear myself out in a few years, but I think differently. I take everything very calmly, and have acquired the habit of doing my work quickly, in short- hand style. I have adopted temperate habits of life and early hours of rising and going to bed ; and I have the happiness of being descended from a healthy stock, being the third child of a family of eleven, only one of whom died in youth, and the young- est of whom, Frederick Pitman, is now on the verge of manhood. I am now thirty-five years of age. My father, an eldest son, is now sixty-one and has scarcely passed the prime of life, and his father, who is eighty-one, gives promise of a few more years in this world. And I may add that when I was a boy I attended my great grandfather's funeral. I hope then, through the Divine mercy, I may reach the age of eighty." Close upon half a century after this a lady visited him ( March 9, 1895), and wrote in a London monthly magazine : "I knew that tomorrow would be his eighty-second birthday, and, had he received me in an easy chair by the fireside, it would have seemed the most natural thing possible on a cold afternoon in midwinter. Instead, I found him in his study seated at his writing table immersed in correspondence, and with no apparent thought about fire. He rose quickly to greet me in his simple, kindly way, and I saw that though his back was slightly bent and his hair and beard were white as the snow outside, his eye was bright and keen, and his face ruddy as a winter's apple. There is a juvenility, too, about Sir Isaac which is very bewilder- ing, for he skips and runs about the house from one room to another, and jumps upon tables and chairs to reach down a book or a picture in such an agile manner that it would put many boys to shame." It might have been said of my brother, with more truth than of most men, "There is but one Isaac Pitman." Yet, strange to say, the world contained at least two, as is related in a letter from my esteemed friend, the late Dr. Thomas Hill,* former President of Harvard University : *Dr. Hill was one of those rare souls whom it is a privilege to call your friend. He was a profound mathematician, and his general information was immense. His genial nature made his talk most varied, interesting, and instructive : and of all those with PHYSICAL AND MENTAL TRAITS. 89 Waltham, Mass., 22 June, 1891. "I have wanted to tell you, if I have not done so, of a curi- ous coincidence. Professor Barber, at Meadville, told me that when he was in Somerville, Mass., he had a parishioner named Isaac Pitman, a very enthusiastic phonographer. This American Pitman went to England, and while there called on your brother Isaac Pitman. The two men had been born and brought up on opposite sides of the Atlantic, but were of no known relationship. But they were of the same age, of the same name, with the same zeal for Shorthand, with the same devotion to Swedenborg, and with the same adherence to two or three other isms ; Professor Barber thinks that homeopathy and vegetarianism were among them. This is, it seems to me, a very curious set of coincidences, and would seem to indicate the probability of mental peculiarity inherited from a common ancestor several generations back." That the two Isaacs were not Dromeos, is shown by the fact that one had leisure to make a pleasure trip across the Atlantic, partly to see his twinship, while the other lived a life of incessant occupation, never, seemingly, spending an hour of his waking life in doing other than the immediate, pressing duty that lay before him. I could give a hundred instances of my brother's devotion to duty rather than yield to what might be called his natural inclination. His sister Rosella, for example, the next younger than Isaac, was, from her fine intellectual and moral nature, more esteemed than either of his two younger sisters, yet he wrote to me (Bath, 13 May, 1853) : "Dear Rose is with us. She came yesterday and will leave tomorrow. So beset with work am I, I cannot take a single hour to be with her." My sister had not seen Isaac for two or three years, and he was the sole attraction in her visit to Bath. They would meet at their brief meals, but beyond this, so "beset" was he with work or, as Rose might have interpreted it, so exacting were his self-imposed duties that whom I have been brought into friendly contact in this broad land, he certainly was one of the most worthy, intellectual, and likeable I have ever known. Dr. Hill was a practi- cal phonographer, and a stanch friend of the phonetic reform. As chairman of the school committee, he inaugurated and superintended a series of experiments in the public schools of Waltham, in which it was clearly shown that, by beginning with the Phonetic method, children acquire the ability to read the common system in much less time than if they began with it, and that its use was attended by many advantages, prominent among which were that it tended to give distinctness of articulation and accuracy of pronunciation. The report of these experiments (1853) was widely quoted in this country and in England. 90 S/ ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. he could not conscientiously spare a single hour to respond to the call of his natural affection when weighed against the duties and attractions of his phonetic mission. That Isaac Pitman possessed strong natural affection, every one who knew him felt assured, but so absorbed were his mind and heart in his special work, that other things were relatively of slight importance. For example, my wife had suffered from a severe fever and illness, soon after our landing in Philadelphia, in giving birth to Ellis, my second born son, due chiefly to our unusually long and tempestuous voy- age. Both of our boy babes were prostrated by sickness that soon terminated their earthly career. I suppose I had communicated these facts to Isaac. His next letter, containing four pages of closely written Shorthand, was wholly occupied with details of phonographic business matters, but the last three lines read, "My hearty sympathies are with you in your domestic trials. Happily there is no poverty in addition. With many kisses for the dear sufferer and sweet little Agnes; farewell !" (the last word crossed with a double phonographic kiss). Whether my brother's life would, on the whole, have been happier, had he taken a different view of the relative importance of his special mission, it is impos- sible to say. Such was his peculiar organism, such were the unusual circumstances which accompanied his special work, that he probably could not have been other than he was, or have done other than he did, and most likely he got out of life all the happi- ness he wanted, or deserved, or was capable of enjoying. My brother's love and friendships depended chiefly on his sympathy with those possessing the following characteristics : a passion for phonetics and the Phonetic Reform, when in agree- ment with his special view of the subject; simplicity of living and purity of life and conduct in accord with his own high ethi- cal standard. Agreement on religious points, when not accom- panied by these other essentials, did not seriously affect him, and blood relationship, except so far as it was accompanied by traits of character referred to, did not seem to weigh with him at all. I do not mean that Isaac was devoid of family affection, but that certain spiritual and mental affinities vastly outweighed them. He could be as impartially severe in his censure of any member of the family, who acted in a manner contrary to his ethical stand- ard, as to the veriest stranger. I do not think he ever prized or retained a friendship where any of the essentials named were PHYSICAL AND MENTAL TRAITS, 91 lacking. He had a great horror of smoking, yet I accompanied him once when he tolerated and walked in company with one who smoked, but who chanced to be the son of his dearest friend, who had introduced Swedenborg's writings to his notice. It was in an early morning walk over the downs at Clifton to view the first wire that had been stretched across the chasm in which flowed the Severn, from the piers of the first suspension bridge built in England (1842). Our friend, on striking a match to light his cigar, said, "I hope my smoking will not be disagreeable to you," to which Isaac quietly replied, "Not if you will permit me to keep to the windward of you." I looked for at least a gentle reprimand, but nothing more was said on the subject, and we walked and talked and greatly enjoyed our morning constitutional. Smoking was regarded by him as a terribly disagreeable habit, and one who used tobacco in a still more offensive way I question if he ever encountered such would have shocked every fiber of his phys- ical and spiritual nature. My brother's extreme repugnance to tobacco was both physiological and ethical, and was probably due less to prejudice than to the keenness of his olfactory powers. He was like Thoreau, who also had a great aversion to smoking, of whom it is said that, while living as a recluse at Walden, he would be notified of the passage of a traveler along the highway, sixty rods off, by the scnt of his pipe. Isaac Pitman was disinterested and generous to a fault ; but, like all things human, his generosity had its limitations. It is equally true that he was determined and exacting in his con- victions, and he conscientiously made his conduct square with his belief. This, of course, was not always agreeable to those who worked with him, and whose convictions, though different, were entertained with equal sincerity. He seemed to believe that the phonetic scheme of writing and printing had been com- mitted to his special charge, and that its development was his assigned work. He acted as if persuaded that he was com- missioned with an almost exclusive right to determine its mani- fold details and mode of promulgation. It would be unjust to his memory not to insist that he was unconscious of his auto- cratic rule. His convictions were deep and decided, and that only which appeared for the time truest and best would he tolerate. No sacrifice was too great to be rid of a blemish ; no effort too great to secure an improvement, and no persistence 92 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. too prolonged to gain a victory for what he regarded as the truth and the right. He was not always logical, for the "best" today might be succeeded by a "better" on the morrow, and the "foundations of truth," sound from today's examination, might be discovered to need repairs before the next month's magazines were put to press. But he consistently carried out his belief, and generally at a pecuniary sacrifice. The belief of today would be no criterion of his convictions on the morrow, and the latter decision might prove more costly than preceding ones, but it would be as consistently carried out, and a kind Providence was trusted in some, for the time being, unseen way, to take charge of that looming type or paper bill, and the compositors' and printers' wages, on the coming Saturday. But, oh, the pitiful strain of those years of ever-present, ever-pressing poverty! It might have been an unconscious spur to goad him, and keep him at his racing pace ; but the mental strain of this brooding incubus of debt the subject of very frequent mention in the hundreds of his letters lying at this moment before me would have been too much for the mental balance of any soul endowed with less energy, conscientiousness, and hope. My brother was a bundle of activities, and as they were directed to one end, they found exercise in endless experiments with the possibilities of his beloved scheme. How often have I heard from his stanchest friends, "What does Isaac Pitman mean by these constant changes?" There was but one reply: "A seeming improvement presented itself, and he was bound to carry it out." My brother Henry, writing to me from Bath, 10 October, 1851, while I was engaged in lecturing on and teaching the perfected (?) Phonog- raphy, said: "I am learning, or trying to learn, every day that it is useless to attempt to check Isaac's irresistible determination to have his own way. Mr. Reed and myself, by an apparent acquiescence, induced him to give up a half-dozen of the pro- posed phonographic changes. It would amuse, if it did not grieve you, to see the number of alterations which are made in in one day in the 'Proposals.'" This, we suppose, referred to the MS. for the lithograph magazine, which was, for a time, pub- lished under this title and circulated among the leading English and American phonographers, containing discussions on the improvements which are incorporated in the tenth edition of the system, and which, with the exception of the inversion of the PHYSICAL AND MENTAL TRAITS. 93 first and third vowels, is substantially the American Phonography of today. Phonography might not have been as near perfection as it now is, had it not been for the constant experimenting and trial that were given the possible "changes for the better" by its indefatigable inventor ; but the present generation can have but a faint idea of the commotion in the phonographic world, the inconvenience to teachers of the art, and the annoyances to prac- tical phonographers, as well as to the teachers of phonetic read- ing, that arose from iny brother's undue haste in incorporating changes and supposed improvements into the system, without sufficient consideration and trial. But it is only fair to say that in the endless discussions of the English and American Phonetic Councils that were carried on from 1844 to 1851, to whom disputed points in Phonography and Phonotypy were submitted, Isaac Pitman was always patiently and calmly, if provokingly, serene. He was fair in argument; he never used a harsh or cutting phrase, but urged his views with seeming deference to the opinions of others. He never, however, yielded a point which, for the time being, seemed best and most desirable. He patiently continued the discussion until his opponents were silent possibly wearied or convinced, and his best friends, whether agreeing or disagreeing with him, were in the habit of saying, " Isaac always carries his point." The truth is, he simply continued the discussion, arguing for the fitting thing, and delayed the voting, when a vote was to decide the question, until his point was gained. Better that the heavens were rent in twain than that any blemish should mar the symmetry of his beloved scheme ! He labored and argued from an instinctive, irresistible impulse, until the real or imagi- nary blemish was removed and the fitting thing accepted and installed. Those who agreed with him found him a redoubtable leader; those who disagreed were often disciplined into line by his chilling and unswerving conscientiousness a condition of mind which, under human limitations, is as liable to be wrong as right. I could not give a better illustrative example of Isaac Pitman's perseverance, changefulness, and conscientious following of his convictions, notwithstanding the sacrifice it entailed, than by mentioning that in the publication of "Milton's Paradise Lost," one of the first of his Phonotypic books, portions of the work, varying from 8 pages (one form) to 96 pages, were set up and 94 SfA ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. V Dr Thomas Hill, < ; '/'/< <. / < fy *$ty experience, founded upou fiveyearsl <( ;. f / is thrust out of its Greek meaning to please Isaac. //, Ee, must have their "European" sense, but Oo. Uu, l\, are quite English. Kk must be used because of its "European" employment, but it is not used by half of the nations of Europe, and Jj must be kept in its English sense. What trash ! I have no patience at having my intellect insulted by such a com- position. Then, Isaac's spelling. But, dear! I wish he would teach a young child to read, and learn what is the meaning of phonetic spelling, for he seems to have lost all recollection of it. As for the opinions of the great majorities, out of those who gave their opinions upon the different subjects, they did not seem worth much, but when they are in the slightest degree opposed to his views, he shows that he does not consider them worth anything ; when they corroborate what he says, then they are all in all. With kind wishes to yourself and wife, here and in America, if you really get there and I think you will have a fine field there farewell!" When I had resolved to come to this country, Mr. Ellis i. So SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. wrote a letter which, contrary to his customary style, an exceedingly distinct and fully vocalized Phonography, was written in longhand, evidently with the thought that thus written it might be of service to me. As it refers to some labors of mine in furtherance of the Phonetic Reform, which conclusively showed the practical nature of the 1847 alphabet, and the advantages of phonotypy in facilitating the acquire- ment of the Romanic print, I give it here, more out of respect for his memory and gratitude for his friendship, than for any care I have for praise of my own work ; that is a feeling I can honestly say I have long outgrown. "7 Apsley Place, Redland, Bristol. 3 Jan., 1852. "My dear Mr. Benn Pitman : . . . "I have many times felt it my duty to say in public and in private concerning your exertions, which no one can appre- ciate more than myself, that, notwithstanding the duties of your arduous profession, you, in the most disinterested manner, devoted much time and great labor to the dissemination of the Phonetic principle of reading, and your efforts were crowned with the most brilliant and deserved success. The experiments which you instituted at the Pauper Schools, at Swinton, near Manchester, upon a class of fifty of their dullest children ; upon the criminals at the Preston House of Correction ; and the Glasgow Bridewell ; your foundation of the Manchester, Preston, and Sheffield Phonetic Schools for adults, have only to be mentioned to show the important part which you played in giving a distinct character and practical value to the Phonetic Principle. But when I consider that you made these experi- ments at a time when they were most needed, that in fact you were one of the first, if not the first, who ventured upon such bold experiments, and who undertook the labor of requesting and were successful in persuading public authorities to allow a fair and convincing trial of Phonetic reading to be made in cases which would severely test its practical value, and that after having done so you labored cheerfully, assiduously, and without any reward but the feelings of your own conscience, till you triumphantly proved the truth of all the statements and promises you had made, then I feel it no more than your due to declare that you have done more than anv one indi- DR. ALEX. J. ELLIS. 1 5 1 vidual in England in propagating and establishing the phonetic principle of teaching to read. The labors of your brother Isaac and myself in preparing the ground and furnishing the means, by books and alphabets, would have failed of the greater part of their effect but for your timely exertions; and as I am fain to hope that the introduction of the Phonetic principle of reading in the practical form which it has now assumed will prove of great national advantage, I thank you, in the name of those who will experience its benefits, for having been one of the first to furnish the decisive experiments on which we rely for inducing the educationalists of our country to give it their consideration and support. "With every good wish and every expectation of hearing of your success in the New World, I remain, Yours very truly, Alex. J. Ellis." Half a century after the time and occurrences here narrated, an unprejudiced judgment, it is believed, may be pronounced with reference to Phonetic history, and, measurably, of its future prospects. From the present standpoint it seems clear 1, that the adoption of the Phonetic principle in the printed representation of the language, from an educational, social, political, and cosmopolitan point of view, is eminently desirable ; 2, that it would be a change of habit of so radical a nature that it cannot, by any possibility, be suddenly, or even speed- ily, brought about; 3, that the adoption of the Phonetic prin- ciple of typic representation must be preceded by a general recognition of its utility and importance, as the only means of ridding the language of an imperfect alphabet, and the resulting false and perplexing spelling (hence the importance of Phonetic propagandism, and instruction by means of even a not-perfect Phonetic alphabet, as tests of its practicability and advantages) ; 4, that the general practise of Phonography, in which a full Phonetic Alphabet is used, and the true alpha- betic principle applied to writing, will greatly aid in bring- ing about the ultimate adoption of the Phonetic principle in the typic representation of the language; 5, that the change from a false to a true representation of the languagje will be gradually, but certainly brought about, not only as an educational necessity and a social and political desirability, but as a commercial 1 52 SJK ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. necessity, from the fact that correct spelling, with a Phonetic Alphabet, will save one quarter of the present cost of all printed matter; 6, that the precise forms of letters to be used for the representation of sounds is comparatively unimportant, so long as the principle of a "sign for a sound" is recognized, as, whatever forms may at first be adopted, future use will, in all probability, change and improve them; 7, that a Phonetic Alphabet, with some objectionable forms, would be better than the present alphabet and the heterogeneous orthography of to-day that it would be an educational and national blessing to have an alphabet as ugly as the Russian, rather than con- tinue to use the present one and suffer from its time and temper- wasting perplexities; 8, that a complete Phonetic representa- tion of the language will be preceded by the gradual employ- ment of an amended Spelling, that is, an approach to consist- ency, by the phonetic use, as far as possible, of the present twenty-six letter alphabet, which will prepare the way for the ultimate acceptance of a complete Phonetic Alphabet of forty letters ; 9, that the constant, never-ceasing mania for change and improvement in the forms of the measurably complete alphabet of '47, by Isaac Pitman, did more to check the spread of Phonetic Reform, stop practical teaching,, and dampen the ardor of those friendly to orthographic consistence, than all other causes combined ; 10, that some consolation may be derived from the fact, it being, perhaps, a necessary evolution- ary process, that future experimenters will be saved trouble and expense by the avoidance of the forms of the hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of "tried and rejected" letters, costly "literary remains," for catalogue of which see next chapter. 154 ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. HIPpiMia^^iMpnirlTllnrOTrii ,JL 7ku Acvnd AWMU met , -mtu/ h wn and frat jwt -facvt , Zf&iuvt, and fietfrt . ax. jm ct&z ML fri frcu, Jwind ! tn timei a. for i in jj.t,cn ea A T AHE representation of Language by Alphabetic characters, I and its manifold uses in writing and printing, may be regarded as the prime factor in modern civilization. Without it progress would be slow and culture impossible ; for the Press, its embodiment, is the special instrument that stimu- lates, formulates, modifies, and shapes thought, commerce, and conduct. Yet, strange to say, while no single element of civ- ilization is of greater use and importance, none can be shown to be more defective. It is the growth of ages of civilization, and never before was its employment so vital to life and progress as it is today, and its very universality is, probably, the chief impediment to its improvement. Reading, writing, and spelling are the rudimentary arts that stand at the threshold of educational training, but the difficulty of mastering them is so great that it is generally supposed to be incidental to their nature. The time and effort spent in the acquirement of these elementary arts are felt to be a great tax on the patience of every teacher, and every parent who acts the part of instructor. Foreigners, however intelligent, who aim to acquire a knowledge of English, express their amazement at the contradiction between the words that meet the eye, and their sounds as they appeal to the ear ; and, with reason, express their keen regret at the difficulty and waste of time necessary to master the thousand-fold eccentrici- ties of English spelling. Custom, which reconciles us to many glaring anomalies, often blinds even the intelligent to the grave consequences of this defect, and tends to stifle investi- gation into the nature and extent of the cause. Yet the cause is plain. An Alphabet, theoretically, contains a letter for each sound in the spoken language, and it is easy to believe that were this really the case, reading and spelling would be as 156 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. simple, and nearly as easy, as is the reading and writing of numbers, after once learning the shapes and values of the Arabic numerals; and it would be so if the alphabet provided a sign for each sound and uniformly used it to represent one and always the same sound. The young scholar, on opening his primer, soon discovers the deficiency of the present alphabet, and, alas, its falsity. He readily learns that s-o is so and n-o is no, but when he is corrected for saying that t-o is not toe, but too, he begins to feel a distrust of letters, finding that they are not true to their alphabetical names. As he progresses he is further puzzled on finding that when o occurs in other words, it has neither the sound of owe nor oo, and that in son, on, women, wolf, fork, choir, etc., the letter has a different sound in each word, while in reasoning it has no sound at all. Another perplexing diffi- culty presents itself when he discovers that the alphabet not only fails to provide a letter for the vowel in to, do, etc., but that when this sound does occur in a word, it is represented in variously arbitrary ways, as, for example : by oo in food, by on in soup, by u in ruling, by vie in true, by ii-e in rude, by ough in through, by ooe in wooed, by eu in Reuben, by ou-e in bourse, by ew in brew, by ew-e in brewed, by o-e in move, by oeu in manoeuvre, by oe in shoe, by ui-e in bruise, by ui in bruised, by wo in two, by out in surtout, by w-o in who, by hu in rhubarb, by heu in rheum, by ouz in rendezvous, and - c u sgac-^ *-* ^ >. >s fte tfcink tbat if^wtreVforeiflier aid Ijad to set about learning lito _^eeciit tlje total "abseicT r7il1 ett)od, and absurd ? a 7 ale , as in m n g. Specimen. Nutig hwotever iz mor tu bi dezjrd, or mor dcl^tful, dan de ljt ov trot : for it iz de sors ov wizdum. Hwen de mjnd iz har- ast wid obscuiriti, distracted \)\ diits; renderd torpid or sadend bj ignorans or f61sitiz, and trot cmerjez az from a dark abfs", it fjnz fort instanteniusli, IJk de sun dispersig mists and vepurs, or Ijk de d6n dispelig de Jedz ov darknes. No. 4, Jan., 1847. s a q, e o ui, ieaouu, j ty'iy u,, w y h, p b t d cj j c g, f v t d s z J 3, 1 r, m n g. Specimen. Nutig hwotever iz mor tu be dezjrd, or mor deljtful, dan de Ijt ov truit : for it iz de sors o V wiz- dum. Hwen de mind iz harast wid obscu.riti, distracted bi dsts, renderd torpid or sad'nd bj ignor- ans or felsitiz, and truit emerjez az from a dare abis, it Jjnz fort instantaniusli, Ijc dc sun dispersig mists and vapurz, or Ijc de den dispelig de Jadz ov dorcnes. No 6, Romanic Alphabet. aa, bi, cc, dd, ee, if, gg, hA it, jj, k fSAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. gracious, get from him ^,"30 or ^40 towards it, for I have offered him a handsome bonus in addition to interest, and I may collect during the next week, through my offer of books at half price, ^30 more, but I fear I shall not. Do spare me some- thing, my brother Benn, and I will raise it for you, for I am not the very worst hand in the world for raising the wind [laughter], before you leave for America." "If you have not already dispatched the ^5, please send it by return post, for I have only half a crown in my pocket, and I cannot send to the bank because I have already overdrawn as much as I would like to venture upon." " I dismissed Evans, the engraver, on Saturday, because I had no means of raising the money to pay his wages. The week before last I had to leave about 3 office wages unpaid, and in order to pay Evans I had to borrow ,5 to make the sum up." " I have no other means whatever of paying my men this week, but by your sending me something by the next post. I have overdrawn Fred in order to meet the paper bill of Tuesday, and can get nothing from him." " I have this moment finished reading the proofs of the Bible [in phonetic print], and must tell you how thankful I feel that I have been enabled to bring it to a close. I had many fears. I shall now reduce my weekly expenses by two hands. I have, however, two very heavy bills falling due, one at the commencement of next month, ^139, and the other at the beginning of April, ^130. If I weather this storm, I shall be safe and easy in all my operations." " I have not i to pay my office tomorrow, and don't know where to get it. I have drained Fred, it seems, to the last extremity. I owe him about ^200, which I have overdrawn, and I pay him interest for it. Blessings on this new Manual, which will set me straight next year. If I hadn't raised the price of the Manual to is 6d, at your suggestion, five years ago, I would do it now." This reference to the increased price of the Manual recalls the fact that a few years after the first cheap edition of Phonog- raphy was published, the system was elaborated into a text- book, called the Manual, with numerous examples and reading exercises in engraved phongraphy, and sold for one shilling. All the books and magazines issued by my brother during his THE INVENTOR'S POVERTY. 179 long career were published at very moderate prices, considering the cost of their production. The instruction books abounded in illustrations, engraved on wood, while the magazines were pro- duced, from Isaac's transfer writing, by the then slow and costly lithographic process. The income from the sale of the Manual was my brother's main reliance, enabling him to carry on his life's work. A year or two after I engaged in lecturing and teaching, I urged him to raise the price of the Manual to one shilling and sixpence. My pleadings were continued for a long time before he yielded. In one of his letters, written a year after, he said: "I bless you for your persistence in this matter." At another time, in reference to the added income the raised price of the Manual gave him, he wrote: "It will be the salvation of the reform." There may seem to be a sad lack of romance in the career of Isaac Pitman, in that he did not live neglected and die poor. Prophets and reformers usually do. A man may give a lucky name to a pill, or invent a collar button, and die a millionaire. Occasionally an inventor, like Edison, Bell, or Isaac Pitman, may work a thought into a practical shape, and be abundantly rewarded, for the invention may supply a universal need. It would accord with the past experience of prophets and reformers had Isaac Pitman spent his life in perfecting a useful art, and a reform in letters of signal benefit to the world, and be paid by his generation with persecution and neglect. Luckity his invention was needed, and he was, in the end, amply rewarded for his genius and skill. His greater and more important reform, as he regarded it, the great educational benefit involved in a perfected typic alphabet, and a reformed orthography, the world is not prepared to accept, and will accept but gradually ; had this alone, been Isaac Pitman's life work, he would, in all probability, have lived and died in struggling poverty. A sadder romance, however, than a struggle with poverty, closed the career of my brother. It came not from the lack, but from the abundance of wealth; not from a cold, unappreciative world, but from those near him, on whom he had heaped abounding favors. It is a story which, for many reasons, we wish might remain untold; but this would be a grave injustice to the memory of the inventor of Phonography, whose latest years were devoted to the sole effort to rectify what he regarded as i8o SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. a prime mistake in his effort to improve his art. The disregard of his ripest experience, the systematic thwarting of his wishes to rectify his own error, thus completing his invention, and depriving him of all rights of authorship, by those to whom he had generously given his accumulated fortune and dedicated the furtherance of the Phonetic reform, he regarded as the cruelest experience of his life. This ungracious closing of a life devoted to "righting the wrong," is reserved for our last chapter, where the story is told in my brother's own words. A VERY interesting and original attempt at alphabetic reform was made in England in 1865-67 by Mr. Alex- ander Melville Bell, who called his scheme Visible Speech. It was an effort to provide a universal alphabet that should be self-interpreting, in that the forms of the letters, it was claimed, would picture their sounds by indicating the position of the organs of speech during their utterance. Attention was called to the scheme by a paper read by the inventor before the Society of Arts, who, after showing the urgent necessity for a more philosophic representation of language than is provided by the Roman alphabet, and its consequent inconsistent spelling, claimed that a scheme of visual representation of sounds was possible, by symbols that should not be arbitrary, as are the letters of the Roman alphabet, but such as would be pictures of sound, or, at least, visual indicators of the position of the organs of speech in uttering the sounds, and with such exactness that all possible shades of sounds, for- eign and dialectic, would be accurately represented. Mr. Bell did not give his auditors any indication of the actual symbols employed in his new scheme. He hoped that the British Gov- ernment would recognize the importance of his invention, in which case he would give it to the public on condition that the Government defrayed the cost of providing types for the new forms of his alphabet, and circulate his system for the general benefit. Isaac Pitman was, of course, deeply interested in Mr. Bell's announced invention, and reprinted his paper in the Phonetic 181 1 82 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. Journal. He offered to furnish means for casting type for the new scheme, little anticipating its complexity, and offered the pages of his Journal for explanation and for the promul- gation of it. Mr. Bell declined the offer, for his mind was set on that eclat which the sanction and patronage of the Govern- ment would give his invention. But the Government, as might be expected, was as deaf to his appeal as had it been made to the Sphinx. Mr. Bell had given several interesting semi-public exhibi- tions in London, demonstrating the practicability of his scheme in correctly indicating the sounds of speech, in which he was assisted by his two sons, Edward Charles and Alexander Graham Bell, the latter now the world-wide-known inventor of the Bell Telephone. In an editorial notice of Mr. Bell's invention, the London Atheneum <5th July, 1865) gives the following account of one those exhibitions: "We and many others have seen this method tested in the following way : Mr. Bell sends his two sons out of the room, and then invites the company to make words in any language, pronounced rightly or wrongly, and sounds of any- kind, no matter how absurd or original, for it is the success of this method that whatever the organs of speech can do, the new alphabet can record. Mr. Bell tried each sound himself, until the proposer admits that he has got it; he then writes it down. After a score of such attempts had been recorded, the young gentlemen are recalled, and they forthwith read what is presented to them, reproducing to a nicety, amidst general laughter and astonishment, all the queer Babelisms which a grave party of philologists have strained their muscles to invent. The original symbols, when read sound after sound, would make a Christian fancy himself in the Zoological Gar- dens." Mr. Ellis was deeply interested in Mr. Bell's scheme, and after attending some of the exhibitions, publicly recorded his opinion of the scientific accuracy of representation which the new scheme provided. There can be no doubt that young Alexander Graham Bell's phonetic training, and assisting in his father's experi- ments, were factors that led to his invention of the Telephone. How marvelous it would have seemed, when these experiments BELLS VISIBLE SPEECH. 183 were in progress in London, had anyone foretold that in the near future one person would utter sounds, or converse with another, with perfect distinctness, a thousand miles away! Yet today there are many merchants in Cincinnati who daily use the long-distance telephone, from five to thirty minutes, discuss- ing business affairs with merchants in New York. At each end of the line there is a phonographic amanuensis to note down all that is said, and the transcription affords a perfect record of matters that might require many days of correspondence to settle. The hoped-for aid from the Government never came, and Mr. Bell, in 1867, published, in a beautifully printed and expen- sive royal-octavo volume, his scheme of Visible Speech, dedi- cating it, in loving remembrance, to his son, Edward Charles, who assisted in the phonetic experiments. Those who favored phonetic reform, but had never experi- mented in devising new typic forms, and therefore did not know the difficulty say, rather, the impossibility of supplying the deficiency of the Roman alphabet with new symbols that equal the old letters in symmetry and beauty, were grievously disappointed at the appearance of the new forms that Mr. Bell had chosen for the representation of the sounds of speech. He had to invent forty new forms, and those who had helped Isaac Pitman in the invention of seventeen new and unobjec- tionable letters were not surprised to find that Mr. Bell's scheme stood no possible chance of general recognition, what- ever might be its scientific merits. A printed page of the forms used in Visible Speech was as distressingly ugly and as unwelcome to the eye as Choctaw would be to the ear of a cultured Italian; and a hundred times more unlikely to be generally accepted by the English-speaking world, than Isaac Pitman's phonotypic scheme, in which only seventeen new letters were added to the Roman alphabet. Mr. Bell's analysis of sounds was unquestionably more complete and scientific than any that preceded it, and those who are interested to know what are the sounds of human speech, in all their scientific minuteness of variation, can obtain a good idea by reading, or, we would rather say, attempting to read, Dr. A. J. Ellis' article on the 'Sounds of Speech', in volume XXII of the last edition of the Encj'clopedia Britannica, page 381. When that most 1 84 SfX ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. wonderful analysis of speech is intelligently examined the reader will form a tolerably accurate idea of the difficulties to be encountered in devising any strictly scientific scheme for the representation of human speech, difficulties which will remain insurmountable obstacles, until the world is more civilized, and its ear better cultivated, when probably we shall be gradually rid of many of the unpleasant fricatives, gutturals, aspirates, and nasals, as well as of some close and obscure vowels that now offend the ear when listening to most of the spoken lan- guages of the world. Mr. Bell is the author of a system of Phonetic Shorthand which is more phonetic than Phonography, in that it recognizes niceties of sound that experience has shown to be unnecessary and undesirable to represent in practical writing. As a steno- graphic system, it has few of the facile abbreviations and time- saving characteristics of Phonography, and though he was awarded a medal for his invention by the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, it is never likely to be practically used, or regarded as other than an interesting philosophic experiment. The Bells were a distinguished family of literary elocu- tionists. The father, Alexander Bell, was a teacher in London, Alex. Melville Bell was a teacher in Edinburgh, and David E. Bell was a teacher in Dublin. After the death of the father, Alex. Melville Bell settled in London, and held the position of lecturer on elocution in University College. David E. Bell, the author of an excellent w r ork on elocution, was my teacher. Through him I came to know the father in London, and I formed a high opinion of his literary and elocutionary ability. I remember he told me that he was the first to punctuate " Mil- ton's Paradise Lost." He was employed by the London pub- lisher, who was about to bring out a fine edition of the work, and my recollection is that he said he was paid ^5 for his task, the sum paid Milton for writing it. I retain a vivid remembrance of meeting Mr. Alex. Melville Bell before leaving England. I was much struck with the purity and charm of his speech. It was a revelation to me. His utterance seemed to combine the easy, graceful intonation of the talk of a cultured actress, with the strength and resonance that should characterize the speech of a man, and though finely modulated, it was without a suggestion of affectation, either as BELLS VISIBLE SPEECH. 185 to matter or manner. I had never before, and I do not know that I have since, heard English spoken with the ease and delicate precision that so distinctly marked the speech of Mr. Bell. Prof. Bell's clean-cut articulation, his flexibility of voice, and finely modulated utterance of English, was but an exem- plification of what efficient and long-continued training of the vocal organs will do for human speech and how charming the result ! All are aware that many years of special training, under competent teachers, are required to "make a singer," but few seem to realize that Speech is as much an art as song, and is equally difficult of acquirement. It is, however, equally worthy of being mastered. The professional elocutionist who tells graduates from our High Schools and Colleges that they rarely utter a sentence that does not abound in faults of pro- nunciation, articulation, modulation, and tone, receives scant credit for his criticism. The surprise is increased if he insists that not only are the unaccented syllables of most words mis- pronounced or slurred, but that many of the simplest and most frequently recurring words of the language (e. g. of, to, for, that, it, but, as, shall, or, can, etc.) are, almost always, mispronounced. The trained ear instantly recognizes the hurried slovenliness of This'n that, for "This and that;" This'r that, for "This or that;" Yoottn do it, for "You can do it." "You shall have it," reaches the ear as YoosWl have it, and "This is for your friend," becomes blurred into This is fur yur friend, etc., etc.; and such imperfect utterances pass current for our beautiful mother tongue! It is scarcely to be expected, however, that correct speech an acknowledged fundamental branch of education will receive the attention it deserves, till the exact sounds that should reach the ear are pictured to the eye. \ attempt to reform the English sys- tem of numbers as applied to money, weights, and measures was made by Isaac Pitman in 1857-62. To the average Ameri- can, accustomed to the reasonable and simple decimal system of computation, the pounds, shillings, pence and farthings scheme of the English people appears an old- fashioned, complex absurdity, and its use in the business affairs of life would seem intolerable. English people might retort and say, "If the deci- mal S) T stem is so supe- rior as a scale for money values, why not apply it to weights and measures? Happily it is being done, for the Government, recognizing its desirability, has legalized its application to both measures and weights, as is seen by its employment in official documents. My brother's attempted reform was more radical than the decimal plan. He thought a change to the duodecimal system would be more desirable, believing it would be attended with less inconvenience to the people of Great Britain than would be the adoption of the decimal scheme. He sought to make twelve, instead of ten, the basis of computation. He would count and compute by dozens and grosses, instead of by tens and hundreds, and he framed a scheme of nomenclature for weights and measures in accord with the duodecimal unit. The duodecimal scale of reckoning he asserted to be the one that furnished the easiest and most natural system of money, weights and measures. He believed it to possess all the advantages of the decimal system of 187 188 SfR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. money, as it could be adapted, in Great Britain, without materially altering the value of the British coinage, and that it would be better to alter the English system of ciphering, and to lay a more convenient basis for arithmetical operations, than it would be to change the coinage and many of the English weights and measures. Twelve, he argued, was more completely divisible than ten, in that it can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6 without fractions; whereas ten can only be divided by 2 and 5 without fractional parts. Twelve is already applied to feet and inches ; the day is divided into two parts, each of twelve hours, and we are accustomed to count articles of merchandise in dozens and grosses. We cannot divide or fold a sheet of printing paper, for a book, in tens, but can readily do so in twelves : and twelve is already a divisor as applied to English money, in that four farthings make a penny and twelve pence make a shilling. These arguments in favor of a duodecimal scheme would be of little weight in inducing Americans to abandon their convenient decimal money system, especially in view of the fact that this scheme of money values is adopted by all the leading nations of Europe, excepting Great Britain. I distinctly recall my first experience of the use of the decimal system of money, which occurred soon after my landing in this country, when for the first time I cast up a column of figures, representing the month's family expenses, and expressed, of course, in American cents. On finding that the simple cast- ing up of a column of figures showed the sum total, without further ado, I experienced a pleasurable sense of relief and sur- prise. Had the monthly expenditure been expressed in English money values, placed in triple column, the farthings, after being added, would have to be divided by four to make pennies ; the pence column, when cast up, would be divided by twelve to make shillings, and the shilling column, separately cast up, would be divided by twenty to make pounds. The release from the time-wasting intricacy to which I had been accustomed seemed akin to what walking over a smooth pavement would be after having been compelled for years to travel over cobble stones, and I could not feel other than pleased and grateful for a scheme at once so simple and reasonable. Isaac Pitman's duodecimal system required two new figures for 10 and n, and after many experiments he selected Z for 10 DECIMAL VS. DUODECIMAL. 189 and for n, and had punches cut, matrices made, and type cast for Minion, Brevier, Bourgeois, and Small Pica fonts. He advo- cated the adoption of the scheme in the Phonetic Journal, which was paged in accordance with this scheme. He kept his private accounts; and the account of the Phonetic Journal Fund, given in the pages of the Phonetic Journal, were in accord with the new method. He seemed for years almost as hopeful of the adoption of the duodecimal scheme as of the success of the Writing and Spelling reform ; and of its ultimate general accept- ance and use, he entertained no doubt. The " three R's, read- ing, riting, and reckoning," he urged, would then become so easy and natural that their acquisition would indeed "come by nature." I do not think many converts were made ; if so, I never heard of them. My brother's best friends generally thought that the advocacy of the decimal system would have been a more judicious effort, especially in view of the fact that con- siderable attention had been given to the subject in England about that time, and a committee of the British Parliament, after a patient consideration of several schemes, all based on a decimal division of money values, had actually recommended an initial step by taking the English sovereign, or pound ster- ling, originally a pound of sterling silver, as a unit of value, and to divide the sovereign into ten florins, the florin into ten cents, and the cent into ten mills. A new coin called the Florin, equal to two English shillings, was designed and minted under the superintendence of Prince Albert, who showed his good taste in giving the English people their first artistically modeled coin. To provide a coin representing a cent, equal to two pence and a half of English money, presented a difficulty. In silver it would be too small, in copper too large. The English penny of the period was a copper, or rather bronze coin, as large and heavy as the American silver dollar. Nickel for coinage was then unknown. Though this metal had been discovered nearly a century before, it was not obtainable in sufficient quantity for coinage till about twenty years ago. The ' nickel ' is probably the most used of any American coin, for no other is so interwoven with the daily necessities of life. Nickel bronze is admirably suited for coinage. Pure nickel does not tarnish by exposure any more than gold, and as an 1 90 S/X ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. alloy, the American coin being three parts of copper and one of nickel, it makes a thoroughly convenient and unobjectionable coin, besides being profitable to the Government, for twelve nickels can be minted for the face value of one. After five or six years Isaac Pitman ceased the advocacy of the duodecimal system. His efforts to perfect Phonography, the preparation of new phonographic books, his weekly Phonetic Journal, monthly Phonographic magazines, correspondence, and the furthering of the interests of the Spelling Reform, required all his time and energies, and he appeared willing to leave his superior scheme of numbers to be resurrected by some future generation, if an improvement on the English system should be generally demanded. My brother, however, never abandoned his conviction that the duodecimal system was the one most worthy of adoption by the English people. In July, 1896, only a few 7 months before his death, he says in the Speller: "Reading and writing by sound, and reckoning and writing by dozens instead of by tens; then elementary education will become 'child's play.' My hope for the reckoning reform, counting by dozens instead of tens, has been quickened in the past month by Herbert Spencer's letters on it in the London Times. I formulated the reckoning reform, on the basis of twelve, forty years ago ; used it for three or four years, advocated it in my Phonetic Journal, kept my accounts in it, and paged the Journal in it. The phonetic alphabet was then on the anvil, and as I could not do justice to both reforms, I let the reckoning reform slide. A goodly portion of the brain of the English Nation has now taken it up, and I hope we shall hear no more of changing our money, weights, and measures, which are mostly on the twelve basis; but instead of intolerable confusion of altering the value and name of every coin, weight, and measure, we shall merely change our mode of writing them, and intro- duce a few new coins, measures, and weights on the present basis of values, and give them Saxon names." FOR nearly thirty years my brother's life was a struggle with poverty and limited means. As long as he con- tinued his costly Phonotypic experiments he was kept poor. The income derived from the sale of his Phonographic works and a great deal which he borrowed, besides liberal subscriptions from friends of the Phonetic Reform, went to pay for new phonotypic punches, matrices, types, and for the paper and printing of books for which there was but little sale, and a great portion of which were gratuitously supplied to teachers who were willing to experiment with them. A sum exceeding one hundred thousand dollars was expended on these phonotypic experiments from 1843 to 1859, exclusive of forty thousand dollars generously invested by Dr. A. J. Ellis. When this outlay ceased, as it did when my brother became con- vinced that his extended alphabet would not be accepted in his day, and that the first and, indeed, the only Typic reform possible must be a phonetic use of the letters of the Roman alphabet that is, a gradually Amended Spelling then Phonog- raphy, secured as it was by copyright, began to yield its author an ample revenue. But he continued his untiring labors, and, almost for the first time in his active life, he allowed his thoughts to be diverted for a time to home affairs. He bought land and built a fitting home for his family in a suburb of Bath.* After two or three times enlarging his business premises, he took his two sons into partnership, bought land, and an entirely new printing establishment was built, and presses and machinery of the most improved kind were purchased for his now *A miniature view of his first house, of dressed "Bath stone," is shown in the illus- tration heading Chapter 22. i 9 2 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. extended business. But wealth to him was without its usual significance. It came unthought of, unsought for, and, as it proved in the end, uncared for. About seven years before his death, he was induced, at the solicitation of his wife and his two sons, to make over to them his entire business, buildings, presses, machinery, stock of books, printing material, his weekly Phonetic Journal, and afterwards, to his Junior partners, the copyright of all his works, which secures the exclusive right to publish during the author's life and for seven years after his death. He was allowed an income which was thought sufficient for his limited needs, though after-events and his letters show that he was doomed, at an advanced age, to feel again the sting of debt and suffer from the restrictive bitter- ness of straightened means. The first intimation I received of this strange affair was communicated to me by Isaac's most intimate and long-trusted friend, Mr. John Bragg, of Birmingham, my brother-in-law, who, under date of iyth February, 1891, wrote: "Last autumn I was in Bath and saw a good deal of Isaac. I fear his too-easy nature has suffered the younger ones to nearly strip him of his hard-earned estate. From his own lips I heard enough to show me that he had given up to them and his wife by legal deed nearly everything of future income, reserving only such a modest share as was shown by them would be 'quite sufficient for his wants.' . . . Other people who know r more about it are savage over it. The family intended to prevent him giving, as he wishes, to the church or other uses, and they have succeeded, I fear. . . . Some of his relatives will feel the deprivation, and do so now. . . . Meantime, Isaac goes on working as hard as ever." This disposition of my brother's publishing business, copyright, and estate, revealed an unhappy and unlooked-for state of affairs, being wholly contrary to his often expressed intentions and repeated assurances in his letters to me. The unavoidable inference was that my brother had yielded to influ- ences he could not escape. He sought to purchase peace ; but it came not. The fruits of the transference of his property and rights were not long in manifesting themselves. Sir Isaac was soon made to feel that he was not desired at the Institute, and he therefore consented to work at home, but the HIS LAST A TTEMPT A T JMPRO VEMENT. 1 93 sons continued to hand over to him all the correspondence requiring knowledge and thought. Notwithstanding that by the deed of transference he had reserved the right of the general direction of the affairs at the Institute, he found that those who handled the funds and paid the wages were the only ones whose orders were obeyed, and Sir Isaac's wishes and orders were henceforth systematically disregarded. The fol- lowing is one of many instances which might be given. He wished to publish in phonetic print a portion of Mrs. Barbauld's "Evenings at Home," for which Miss Rosie Pitman, my brother Henry's artistic daughter, had made original illustrations. Under date of yth July, 1893, Isaac wrote, "I ordered the fore- man at the Institute to get the three books made up from 'Evenings at Home' and put to press three weeks ago, and have heard nothing about it since. Neither of my sons cares a fig about the Spelling Reform, and as the Institute is a mile away from me, I cannot work at it as I did when I went there ever)' day. I have so much work in the way of correspondence that it has been impossible hitherto for me to lithograph the first number of the Phonographer [devoted to the 'Improvements' under discussion]. I will, however, again urge the forwarding of these Phonetic Readers." Probably he did, but no regard seems to have been paid to his wishes, for nothing resulted, and the beautiful illustrations were unused. It was not long after this transference of the usufruct of Isaac Pitman's life's labors, together with the literary and business accumulations of more than half a century, that cer- tain improvements in Phonography presented themselves to the inventor's mind as necessary to the completion of the sys- tem. Much thought, innumerable experiments, and extensive correspondence with teachers of the art, had convinced him that the alteration he had incorporated in the English text- books of '62, and in accord with which a whole generation of phonographers had been instructed, was a great mistake, and the so-called "improvements" he now sought to introduce were, in fact, the undoing of the change of '62, and a return to the system as it previously existed. The determination of the author to complete his system gave rise to an unlooked-for crisis. Isaac Pitman, it is true, had invented and nearly perfected his system of brief writing ; i 9 4 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. its development had required the unceasing activities of more than sixty years ; it had been welcomed as a much-needed art throughout the English speaking world ; it had brought honor and wealth to the inventor, and his unquestioned leadership, it might be supposed, included his right to improve his system in accord with his long and varied experience. But now, when he wished to give the finishing touch to his beloved art, and employ the necessary agencies to carry his views into effect, he found himself beset with most untoward obstacles. The elder son antagonized Sir Isaac at every point, and the younger son, wholly under the influence of his elder brother, joined in thwarting his father's cherished wishes. To American phonographers and to the majority of the older and more experienced English writers of the system, the changes of '62 seemed unwise and undesirable, and in America they were not adopted. The attempt of the author now to undo a "not-sufficiently-considered" change, and to remove what he termed "a blot upon the system," proved the one serious trouble of his life. It shortened and embittered his latter days, and there is probably not to be found in the annals of literature a more pathetic episode than that recited by my brother of his inef- fectual attempts to remedy a former mistake, which he now believed would restore his system to an ideal completeness, and make it coincide with what had been found so admirable and satisfactory to American phonographers. The author's two sons determinedly opposed their father's views. The proposed changes could not b"e introduced into the publishing system without being first submitted to the phonographic world; this it was thought would give rise to endless discussion, and the introduction of the changes into the Text Books and other publications would be attended with considerable trouble and expense. These were considerations of less than a feather's weight to the inventor, when set against an admitted improvement of the system ; but to the Junior partners, who had never done anything, either to improve or spread the art, and whose views of Phonography were purely commercial, they appeared so formidable that they resolved if possible to avoid the issue. Sir Isaac's presence at the Phonetic Institute was now no longer desired. He was denied any of the facilities of his HIS LAST A TTEMPT A T IMPRO VEMENT. 1 95 printing establishment, and found himself unable to control a line of explanation or comment in the weekly Phonetic Jour- nal, which he had established and conducted for fifty years. The inventor had improved his system, but he could not revise his books ; he had a message of interest to deliver to his thousands of adherents, but he was forbidden to speak through the only organ that would reach the phonographic world. The improvements which had been thoroughly discussed and approved by leading phonographers during three years' corre- spondence, he now wished to present to the great body of writers of his system for their approval or rejection ; but the facilities of his office, which had grown large and efficient by more than half a century of his personal labor, were closed to him. The new conditions, however, were quietly but decisively met. In his eighty-second year, the venerable author opened a new printing office ! To a conscience as sensitive as my brother's, and to energies as limitless as his, conviction made action a necessity. Denied the use of his own Journal, he established a new one. He printed and scattered tens of thousands of explanatory documents, and opened an extensive correspondence with teachers the land over ; his chief concern being not so much to change the individual practise of phonog- ra'phers, as to improve and simplify the art for the benefit of countless thousands who should hereafter learn and practise it. The story of the author's attempt to introduce his improve- ments and embody them in the Text Books is told in the twenty-five monthly numbers of his Speller, beginning January, 1895. He calls it a battle, and a pathetic and tragic interest attends the narration of a contest, bravely and perseveringly continued, and as unceasingly thwarted by his sons, till the day he died. Hundreds of approving and encouraging letters are given month after month in the Speller. Among other leading phonographers, Mr. T. A. Reed, who stood in the front rank, strongly indorsed the improvements and urged their general acceptance. He writes, "They are but a return to a safe, convenient practise which I never abandoned." He adds: " I do not wish to enter upon a question of the painful family feud to which this matter has given rise. It grieves me not a little. Sir Isaac Pitman has parted with his copy- right and all interests in the phonographic business to his sons. 196 SfR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. Probably if he had foreseen how he would be handicapped by such an arrangement, and be deprived of the control of the development of his own system, he would have hesitated before resigning his position at the helm." The Speller for November, 1895, contains, among numer- ous approving letters, an interesting communication from Dr. Walsh, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, highly approving the proposed changes. He writes : "I beg to con- gratulate you on the success that has at length begun to reward your patient efforts to secure the general acceptance of the great reform in Phonography, for which you have been laboring so perseveringly, and in the face of harassing obstruc- tions, for the last three years. The October number of the Speller gives abundant evidence of how notable the advance is that has been made. The reform which you are so heroic- ally struggling to get introduced into the Text Books aims primarily at the removal of what is, undoubtedly, a most serious defect in the system, as we have it in the Text Books an insuperable obstacle to the progress of the learner." The venerable Archbishop thus closed his letter: "Allow me to add that I write this letter in the spirit of the closing words of Mr. Thomas Allen Reed's admirable letter in the October Speller. ' Everyone who wishes well to Pho- nography should throw the weight of his influence, however slight it may be, into the scale, and protest against the Inventor having his closing years clouded by the reflection that he is not allowed to present the product of his brain, and the object of his solicitude in what he conceives to be its best (because most useful) form.' ' The Speller, during the two years of its existence, con- tained extracts from hundreds of letters, mainly from teachers, expressive of approval and hopes that the improvement would at once be incorporated into the text books. Yet month after month the aged inventor while writing words of encourage- ment to those who approved of the changes, speaks of the hindrances the firm put in the way of their adoption, and of their continued efforts to keep from the great body of phonog- raphers all knowledge of the improvements the author had made in the Phonographic system. The Speller for October, 1896, contains, in addition to a series of letters welcoming the HIS LAST A TTEMP T AT IMPRO VEMENT. 1 9; THE PHONETIC INSTITUTE AT BATH. improvements, a numerously signed appeal from teachers to the firm urging that a supply of books containing the improve- ments should be prepared for the approaching winter classes. The appeal concludes, " Hundreds of teachers and thousands of pupils now write the New Style, and it is due to their conviction of its advantages that the teaching books should contain them, at least so far as to give them as an alternative." Isaac Pitman states that he forwarded this appeal to the firm asking the favor of a reply on or before the loth of Septem- ber, and adds, "On the nth of September I was taken ill, and I have been confined to my bed till today, 2nd of October. Thus extra time has been given to the firm to consider their reply to the teachers' simple request. It is an emphatic 'No.' Any further reference of this subject to the publishing firm is unnecessary." This was only a few months before he died. "These improvements," writes Sir Isaac, "have been elaborated by infinite thought, consultation, and practise, since March, 1892 . . . The amount of change in the writing of Phonog- raphy caused by the improvements is very small indeed, but the effect in simplifying the system, and the advantage to both teacher and pupil, is great, making the art easier for the learner, shorter for the writer, and more legible and symmetrical." It seems incredible to American phonographers who have always written in accord with the suggested "improvements," that their recommendation should have given rise to any con- troversy, much less any determined opposition ; and it is apparent throughout the author's recital of the Firm's refusal fairly to consider the results of their father's thought, time, 198 S/tf ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. skill, and patience, that he is chiefly moved and incensed by what he terms "the sluggishness that refuses to test the pro- posals, and the indolence that will not even look at them." The approaching end of an heroic career is dimly fore- shadowed in the November number of the Speller. The author quotes from the letter of an old friend and teacher, " Most earnestly do I trust that your valuable life may be long spared, and that its close may not be disturbed by annoyances and dispute in connection with the great work which is due to your untiring energy and genius." Sir Isaac adds : " The congratulations I receive on my 'recovery' lead me to think that phonographers, who all regard me with paternal affection, would be interested in knowing how I am, and what brought me down. I am recovering, but not recovered. This is my seventh week of confinement. I am as weak as a baby, except in my head, in the power to guide my limbs consciously, and in possessing a sound bodily constitution. I am greatly dis- tressed, but without pain, by shortness of breath, especially after the slightest exertion, such as eating, getting up from my chair to reach a book from the bookcase, and sitting down again. I then pant for five minutes and cannot write until the heart-throbs are equalized. The mitral valve of the heart does not fulfill its duty and allows the blood to leak back, and thus the contraction of the lungs has to force out this por- tion of the blood twice. The cause of my illness must be traced back to March, 1892. I then commenced a series of experiments and correspondence with the best phonographers with reference to the improvements. Denied access to my own Journal for the interchange of ideas with the best writers, I was thrown back on my pen and the postoffice, and for four years and a half spent the whole day writing to phonographers and pressing my correspondents, especially teachers, to try the New Style, so advantageous to learners. On the nth of Sep- tember I took to my bed. On Sunday, 4th of October, my nurse dressed me. From that time I have been gradually but slowly recovering. Without Shorthand I could not have carried on my business during these seven weeks. I am able to keep on the Speller, but can no more correspond with phonographers. I have only strength enough to write two or three lines, and then sit up and rest. In this slow work HfS LAST A TTEMPT A T IMPRO VEMENT. 199 I occupy about four hours a day. Occasionally, for a day, I am too weak to read or write." The December Speller contains many additional letters of encouragement and approval, and has the following significant words from this sadly worn but unyielding leader : "I regret that I am unable to report favorably of my health, i4th of November. Since the last bulletin, 3oth of October, my strength has not increased, and my breathing has become more difficult. On Monday I dictated a portion of the Index of this volume to my clerk, and finished it on Tuesday. The effect of this slight exercise of the lungs was that on Wednesday I was too weak to be dressed." Not one of the "seventy assistants" of his Phonetic Institute could be spared to relieve the vener- able Father of Phonography, in his great debility, from this clerical drudgery. After the preparation of "copy" for the December, 1896, Speller, Sir Isaac, evidently feeling that his diminished strength would not enable him to continue its publication, wrote and sent a brief notice for insertion in the Phonetic Journal of 5th of December: "I shall be obliged if you will inform the subscribers to my monthly periodical, The Speller, that with the December number, now ready, the work will cease as a Monthly, and will appear occasionally, as I have strength to bring it out." (Signed) Isaac Pitman. The notice was not inserted. To keep faith with his friends and followers of the New Style, and to avoid disappointing them, Sir Isaac braces up his declining energies and prepares copy for a new number. The January Speller appears, and it is the last. Commenting on the non-appearance of the notice in the Phonetic Journal, Sir Isaac says : "I have been quietly dropped from a share in its man- agement . . . My notice was received by the firm with appar- ent approval, and the reply [sent by the younger son] was, 'It is all right.' I interpreted this to signify that the letter would be inserted. Great was my disappointment, on receiving a copy of the Journal, to find that it was not inserted. This means a continuance of the war of the two styles. For two years the firm has persistently suppressed the mention of the fact in its Journal that there is a Monthly publication called The Speller; and especially have they, for nearly five years, pre- vented the vast body of phonographers from knowing that 200 SIR ISAAC PITMAN'S LIFE AND LABORS. a great improvement has been made in the system, simplify- ing it, and reducing the labor of learning and teaching it about one-half. The Speller was established to advocate this great improvement in Phonography. Every obstacle was raised to its publication. I have carried on the battle against my part- ners for nearly six years, and now devolve it on the large body of progressive phonographers. Since March, 1892, neither of the Junior members of the firm of 'Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons' has spoken to me the head of the firm on the sub- ject of the 'Improvements.'* They say 'it is not a subject of discussion,' which, I suppose, means that they will continue printing the present big hooks and the double forms of fr, vr, t/ir, dhr, etc. It is for phonographic teachers to say they will not teach these principles, but cross them out in the Instruc- tion Books." To a teacher who writes, " I trust you will have your way eventually," Sir Isaac adds, "I shall work at it till I get it. The Speller will be carried on till the improvements appear in the Instruction Books, if I live so long. And if I leave this world before that time, everyone who learns the system, and is a New Style writer, will prefer it to the Old Style, write it, disseminate it, and fight for it." These striking prophetic words in reference to his cherished hopes appear on the last page of the last number of The Speller, and were dic- tated the day before he died. Two years before, my brother gave promise of a life of a hundred years. But opening a printing office at his advanced age, establishing The Speller, the only means left him to bring his improvements before the phonographic world and the strain necessarily attending an unequal and ungracious con- test, taxed but too severely an organism accustomed to work in an atmosphere of peace. A slight cold was followed by a bronchial attack, making breathing, after the slightest exertion, exceedingly difficult. At length one of the valves of his heart burst. He still worked ; when he became unable to write, he dictated, sitting in his chair wrapped in blankets. Writing to his brother Henry a week before his decease, he said: "I get weaker continually. Today I have not been strong enough to be dressed, and have sat in my armchair wrapped in Arctic *The nature of the opposition with which my brother had to contend, is shown when he writes, "Alfred never speaks tome." HIS LAST A TTEMPT A T IMPRO VEMENT. 201 blankets. As there is no possibility of getting at a broken valve of the heart, the cause of my weakness, I must expect a continual decrease of strength until the heart gives its last pulsation, and the angelic messengers who wait on the dying draw out the spiritual body from this one. Then I shall have a sound heart, and get to work in my new sphere of life. Don't give yourself any trouble about me. Your affectionate brother, Isaac." The day before he died, the physicians' bul- letin read, "Sir Isaac Pitman was much worse yesterday, and his end is almost daily expected. Yesterday the veteran pho- nographer wrote for his spelling reform publication, The Speller, that his life's work was over." Then came welcome peace and rest, with full assurance of a continued existence where his life's love of usefulness would find corresponding activities in an atmosphere of recip- rocal service ; where he would not be denied fair play, and where the chilling blight of selfishness and ingratitude would be all unknown. Unusual honors were paid the departed veteran, if silmultaneous press laudations the world over, wher- ever Anglo-Saxon civilization prevails, may be so interpreted. His body was taken to Woking, 28th of January, 1897, and cre- mated, according to his wish, attended by his younger son. Simultaneous commemorative services were held in the vener- able Bath Abbey Church, at the principal New Church in London, and at his home New Church at Bath. A notable event it was for a reformer and a " Dissenter " to be consid- ered deserving a commemorative service in an English Cathe- dral. In due time a mural tablet was placed by the city on the house in the Royal Crescent, where he lived and died, to help preserve the memory of an inventor, whose system of writing had been adapted to fourteen European and Oriental languages, and whose life's work, in simple "love of use," had proved him a time and labor-saving benefactor to his race. B. 0. BAKEH LAWYtK DALLAS UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY A 000 564 899 3 B. 0.