Language, we all use it and few of us think about the form it takes on the page. But how did the transmittal of ideas in written form evolve from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the ABCs in use in most countries around the world today? This work, written by a librarian and scholar, draws on previously published works and also direct correspondence with archaeologists still uncovering secrets in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Her death left this work unfinished, but others were able to polish it for publication.
By : Frances Jermain ( - 1905)
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In one of the closing days of August, 1905, the author of this work, Frances D. Jermain, received the summons of her Maker to join the Silent Majority. The call came suddenly, finding her in the full possession of her ever remarkable intellectual powers, and with the ambition for much yet to do.
For nearly twenty-five years, she had been at the head of the Toledo Public Library, in the upbuilding of which she was ever the inspiration and the guiding spirit.
With more than the ordinary capacity for organization and the practical, she planned and carried out the working details of all notable improvements, in that thoroughly modern library.
Others, who took up the work from which she retired about a year before her death, will carry it forward with that devotion and capacity which it should inspire; but they will but build additions to the edifice which she reared.
Her death brought forth a remarkable outpouring of voluntary tributes to her worth and work. From these has come the realization that by her death Toledo has lost one whose influence upon its intellectual life was the most potent and far reaching of any citizen it has ever lost.
Living and working nobly in public as in her ideally perfect domestic life, her loss is profoundly felt.
Political administrations came and went, party triumphs and party defeats lived out “their little day” and are long since forgot; but year after year, until a quarter of a century had nearly gone, this brave and learned little woman ruled, with gentle power and kindly wisdom, the destinies of the Toledo Public Library.
In the growth and development of this notable public institution, selecting its contents, the literary advisor of lawyers, journalists, educators and students, she acquired, with her discriminating judgment and retentive memory, a remarkable knowledge of the contents of books. A subject practically never arose upon which she could not at once give, either the needed reference or the full information required, and the library contained seventy thousand volumes!
In this reference work, she became deeply impressed with the need of a concise history of the beginnings and development of our modern alphabet.
The information on the subject was widely scattered and very great. It was found nowhere in a condensed and yet adequate form. She knew from experience what the value to libraries, educators and students generally, a concise history upon the subject would be.
This she undertook and finally completed. Not confining her account to information gathered from works already published dealing with the subject, she kept in constant correspondence with the leading archæologists carrying on researches in both Egypt and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Thus she literally walked with these great scholars “In the Path of the Alphabet,” and her work took on that original and valuable character based upon those most recent and wonderful discoveries which have forever silenced the voice of “The Higher Criticism.”
This work, which we now reverently give to public print, is therefore based upon her broad and deep knowledge upon the subject—from original sources; a work of patient labor; of a profound Christian faith; a work begun and finished in that spirit by which alone the best work of God’s laborers needs must be done.
Upon her behalf, grateful acknowledgment is here made to Professor A. H. Sayce, Professor H. V. Hilprecht, Professor James A. Craig and Professor C. R. Condor, who walked with her “In the Path of the Alphabet.”
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