A Busy Year at the Old Squires | Page 3

and that we ought all to work hard to hurry
it up and realize it.
It is quite wonderful what an influence for good a wide-awake teacher,
like Master Pierson, can exert in a school of forty or fifty boys and girls
like ours in the old Squire's district, particularly where many of them

"don't know what they are in the world for," and have difficulty in
deciding on a vocation in life.
At that time there was much being said about a Universal Language. As
there are fifty or more diverse languages, spoken by mankind, to say
nothing of hundreds of different dialects, and as people now travel
freely to all parts of the earth, the advantages of one common language
for all nations are apparent to all who reflect on the subject. At present,
months and years of our short lives are spent learning foreign languages.
A complete education demands that the American whose mother
tongue is the English, must learn French, German, Spanish and Italian,
to say nothing of the more difficult languages of eastern Europe and the
Orient. Otherwise the traveler, without an interpreter, cannot make
himself understood, and do business outside his own country.
The want of a common means of communication therefore has long
been recognized; and about that time some one had invented a
somewhat imperfect method of universal speech, with the idea of
having everybody learn it, and so be able to converse with the
inhabitants of all lands without the well-nigh impossible task of
learning five, or ten, or fifty different languages.
The idea impressed everybody as a good one, and enjoyed a
considerable popularity for a time. But practically this was soon found
to be a clumsy and inadequate form of speech, also that many other
drawbacks attended its adoption.
But the main idea held good; and since that time Volapuk, Bolak,
Esperanto and Ido have appeared, but without meeting with great
success. The same disadvantages attend them, each and all.
In thinking the matter over and talking of it, one night at the old
Squire's, that winter, Master Pierson hit on the best, most practical plan
for a universal language which I have ever heard put forward. "Latin is
the foundation of all the modern languages of Christendom," he said.
"Or if not the foundation, it enters largely into all of them. Law,
theology, medicine and philosophy are dependent on Latin for their
descriptive terms. Without Latin words, modern science would be a

jargon which couldn't be taught at all. Without Latin, the English
language, itself, would relapse to the crude, primitive Saxon speech of
our ancestors. No one can claim to be well educated till he has studied
Latin.
"Now as we have need to learn Latin anyway, why not kill two birds
with one stone, and make Latin our universal language? Why not have
a colloquial, every-day Latin, such as the Romans used to speak in Italy?
In point of fact, Latin was the universal language with travelers and
educated people all through the Middle Ages. We need to learn it
anyhow, so why not make it our needed form of common speech?"
I remember just how earnest old Joel became as he set forth his new
idea of his. He jumped up and tore round the old sitting-room. He
rubbed my ears again, rumpled Tom's hair, caught Catherine by both
her hands and went ring-round-the-rosy with her, nearly knocking
down the table, lamp and all! "The greatest idea yet!" he shouted. "Just
what's wanted for a Universal Language!" He went and drew in the old
Squire to hear about it; and the old Squire admitted that it sounded
reasonable. "For I can see," he said, "that it would keep Latin, and the
derivation of words from it, fresh in our minds. It would prove a
constant review of the words from which our language has been
formed.
"But Latin always looked to me rather heavy and perhaps too clumsy
for every-day talk," the old gentleman remarked. "Think you could talk
it?"
"Sure!" Master Pierson cried. "The old Romans spoke it. So can we.
And that's just what I will do. I will get up a book of conversational
Latin--enough to make a Common Language for every-day use." And
in point of fact that was what old Joel was doing, for four or five weeks
afterwards. He had Theodora and Catherine copy out page after page of
it--as many as twenty pages. He wanted us each to have a copy of it;
and for a time at least, he intended to have it printed.
A few days ago I came upon some of those faded, yellow pages, folded
up in an old text book of Æsop's Latin Fables--the one Tom and I were

then using; and I will set down