SLAVES To SYMBOLS.
Those people—referred to by statisticians, in moments of passion, as mediaevalists—who find something ludicrous, if not humiliating, in the modern world's subservience to statistics, have recently had two excuses for laughing up their sleeves. Civilization has begun to find that the figures on
which she is so largely, and in so many ways, dependent are capable of exerting a certain Puckish tyranny, even while
they do her service. Witness the recent discussion as to the best way of obviating "wrong numbers" on the telephone. The symbols 5 and 9 are phonetically too much alike, and we are at the mercy of their similarity. Various brave suggestions for their reform have been nevertheless put forward—" fife," "fox," " nan," and so on. It is interesting to speculate how far such reform, if it were feasible, would permeate the speech of posterity. It could hardly be con- fined to the use of the telephone, and we may still live to hear our grandchildren, lisping their first recitations at our knees, submit well-known passages to such pleasing variations as :
" Full fathom fox thy father lies"
and
"Lass Porsena of Clusium
By the neon gods he swore. . . ."
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