Friday

Saturday

PLAIN ENGLISH

LESSON 13

Dear Comrade:

Did you ever tie a knot in your handkerchief to help you remember to get something you felt almost sure you would forget? Well, tying a knot in a cord was one of the first ways devised by our ancestors of long ago to aid them to remember. They also used this plan to send word to those at a distance or to keep track of things for succeeding generations. A relic of this old device of our forefathers is also found in the rosary on which the Roman Catholic counts his beads as an aid to memory.

There are some primitive tribes to-day who still use knotted strings as an aid to memory. These consist of a main cord, and fastened at given distances are finer cords of different colors. Each cord is knotted in different ways to mean different things and each color, too, has its own meaning. A red string stands for soldiers, a yellow for gold, and a green for corn, and so on, while a single knot may mean ten, two single knots twenty, a double knot 100, two double knots 200. In this way, they keep a record of things, transmit orders and use them for various purposes.

Only a generation ago the tax gatherers in the Island of Hawaii kept account of the assessable property on lines of cordage knotted in this manner, and these cords in some cases were three thousand feet long. The method of keeping track of things by means of a notched stick is easily within the memory of many people living today. For in England in the early part of the last century, accounts of debts to the government were kept by means of tally sticks, which were merely notched sticks.