Art of the Etruscans

1907

Mysterious People Who Left Traces of a Remarkable Civilization

Why did the Etruscans devote their whole lives to the incessant making of pottery until it accumulated in such quantities that they were compelled to bury it in order to keep room for themselves in their streets and houses?

Then, again, there is the mystery of the Etruscan inscriptions. These inscriptions are fairly numerous, but hitherto they have proved to be utterly undecipherable. The Etruscan is the only dead language that has defied investigation. Considered as a language, nothing could seem more improbable than the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, but Egyptologists can read them with such ease that almost any given series of hieroglyphics can be read in three or four ways by an equal number of rival Egyptologists. Any language more utterly impossible at first glance than the Assyrian arrowhead language could not well be imagined, but there are many learned men who can read, write and speak arrowhead with facility. And yet no man can make the least sense of the writings left by the Etruscans, although they are written in Roman characters.

All that we know of the Etruscans seems unreasonable and preposterous. Naturally this makes them fascinating to every one who delights in mystery and the solution of puzzles. — Putnam's Magazine.

Wrong Meaning of Message

1915

Young Wife Makes Amusing Interpretation of Scripture in a Telegram From Girl Friend

They were speaking of the remarkable way in which telegraphic messages are occasionally interpreted, and this story was recalled by Governor- elect David I. Walsh of Massachusetts.

Some time ago the stork visited the home of a happy young couple in a New England town, and wishing to notify her girl chum who lived in a distant city, the mother sent the following telegram:

"For unto us a child is born. — Isaiah 9:6."

"Oh, John," exclaimed the girl chum to her husband on receiving the dispatch. "I have just got a telegram from Gladys and what do you think?"

"You have got me chucked out at first in the conundrum game," indulgently smiled John. "What's the answer?"

"Gladys has a baby boy!" enthusiastically responded little wifey. "His name is Isaiah and he weighs nine pounds and six ounces!" — Philadelphia Telegraph.