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In one part of the picture we have a lake, and near by stands a priest pouring water on the head of a native. On the other side, a poor Indian has a cord about his throat. Lines run from these two groups to a central figure, a man with beard and full Spanish panoply. The interpretation of the picture-writing is this: "Be baptized as this saved heathen, or be hanged as that damned heathen."
In many colours were birds and beasts, and men in profile, and queer marks that he knew to be picture-writing; processions of slaves and oxen, reapers and water-bearers. The tints were fresh under their overlaying lacquer. There was even a smell of varnish. He wondered if the contents if It were in the same remarkable state of preservation.
Its alphabetical characters are therefore ideographic, and not phonetic. They were originally rude representations of the thing signified; but they have undergone various changes from picture-writing to the present more symbolical and more complete system.
With the ring he drew out also a scroll of picture-writing, and held them both before the eyes of the pabas. Now the ring was the ring of Montezuma, and the scroll was signed by the great high priest of Tenoctitlan, and those who looked on the ring and the scroll knew well that to disobey the mandate of him who bore them was death and dishonour in one.
In the lightning flash resides a similarly strong servant of man, which was of old his slave and which some day will be his slave again. "Quite a different thing is the alphabet. It is what enables me to know the meaning of fine markings, whereas you boys know only rude picture-writing.
He raised him altars, Stonehenges and Karnaks. His picture-writing grew into hieroglyphs and cuneiforms, and finally emerged, by imperceptible steps, into alphabetic symbols, the raw material of the art of printing.
Not that he must needs become an expert Egyptologist. Yet it would profit any photoplay man to study to think like the Egyptians, the great picture-writing people. There is as much reason for this course as for the Bible student's apprenticeship in Hebrew. Hieroglyphics can prove their worth, even without the help of an Egyptian history.
More moving picture theatres in doubtful territory will help make dry voters. And wet territory voted dry will bring about a greatly accelerated patronage of the photoplay houses. There is every strategic reason why these two forces should patch up a truce. Meanwhile, the cave-man, reader of picture-writing, is given a chance to admit light into his mind, whatever he puts to his lips.
Many of the old roads still exist in Yorkshire and Lancashire; but all that remains of the former traffic is the pack-horse still painted on village sign-boards things as retentive of odd bygone facts as the picture-writing of the ancient Mexicans.* While the road communications of the country remained thus imperfect, the people of one part of England knew next to nothing of the other.
An aptly-named place; wherever a ledge offered foothold, and even in places that seemed wholly beyond reach of human hands, the bald front of the cliff was chiseled with rude traceries the picture-writing of the Blackfoot tribe. The history of a thousand battles and buffalo-hunts was written there.
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