uttery this is what would have been done; for if a snuff-box can
say "Send me a quart of beer," so efficiently that the beer is sent, it
is impossible to say that it is not a _bona fide_ sentence. As for the
recipient of the message, the butler did not probably translate the snuff-
box into articulate nouns and verbs; as soon as he saw it he just went
down into the cellar and drew the beer, and if he thought at all, it was
probably about something else. Yet he must have been thinking without
words, or he would have drawn too much beer or too little, or have spilt
it in the bringing it up, and we may be sure that he did none of these
things.

You will, of course, observe that if Mrs. Bentley had sent the snuff-box
to the buttery of St. John's College instead of Trinity, it would not
have been language, for there would have been no covenant between sayer
and sayee as to what the symbol should represent, there would have been
no previously established association of ideas in the mind of the butler
of St. John's between beer and snuff-box; the connection was artificial,
arbitrary, and by no means one of those in respect of which an impromptu
bargain might be proposed by the very symbol itself, and assented to
without previous formality by the person to whom it was presented. More
briefly, the butler of St. John's would not have been able to understand
and read it aright. It would have been a dead letter to him--a snuff-box
and not a letter; whereas to the butler of Trinity it was a letter and
not a snuff-box.

You will also note that it was only at the moment when he was looking at
it and accepting it as a message that it flashed forth from snuff-box-
hood into the light and life of living utterance. As soon as it had
kindled the butler into sending a single quart of beer, its force was
spent until Mrs. Bentley threw her soul into it again and charged it anew
by wanting more beer, and sending it down accordingly.

Again, take the ring which the Earl of Essex sent to Queen Elizabeth, but
which the queen did not receive. This was intended as a sentence, but
failed to become effectual language because the sensible material symbol
never reached those sentient organs which it was intended to affect. A
book, again, however full of excellent words it may be, is not language
when it is merely standing on a bookshelf. It speaks to no one, unless
when being actually read, or quoted from by an act of memory. It is
potential