A KEY TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
ETHNOLOGIST, BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
WASHINGTON, D C.
Our years are like the shadows
That o'er the meadows fall,
Are like the fragile wildflower
That withers by the wall—
A dream, a song, a story,
By others quickly told,
An unremaining glory
Of years that soon get old.
AFTER five thousand years all the spoken languages of the present time will have become extinct or so altered as to require a key for their understanding. The English language spoken in the United States today, if not replaced by some other natural or invented tongue, will have suffered complete reforming many times over through the laws of linguistic evolving—laws which though proceeding in regular paths will, because of their complexity, work the apparent result of radical havoc. Books of the present day, through chemical change, will have disappeared.
Records of the Etruscan language of ancient Italy in Greek letters which are easily readable have amply survived to the present time, but no one has been able to understand the words and their meaning. We have a whole book in Etruscan, but no one can understand it. The key
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