ntagruel by making fantastic and mystic motions
in pretended disputation with the signs given by Thaumast in good
faith. Yet the latter confessed himself conquered, and declared that
he had derived inestimable information from the purposely meaningless
gestures. The satire upon the diverse interpretations of the gestures
of Naz-de-cabre (_Pantagruel_, Book III, chap. xx) is to the same
effect, showing it to have been a favorite theme with Rabelais.

ABBREVIATIONS.

A lesson was learned by the writer as to the abbreviation of signs,
and the possibility of discovering the original meaning of those most
obscure, from the attempts of a Cheyenne to convey the idea of _old
man_. He held his right hand forward, bent at elbow, fingers and thumb
closed sidewise. This not conveying any sense, he found a long stick,
bent his back, and supported his frame in a tottering step by the
stick held, as was before only imagined. Here at once was decrepit age
dependent on a staff. The principle of abbreviation or reduction may
be illustrated by supposing a person, under circumstances forbidding
the use of the voice, seeking to call attention to a particular bird
on a tree, and failing to do so by mere indication. Descriptive signs
are resorted to, perhaps suggesting the bill and wings of the bird,
its manner of clinging to the twig with its feet, its size by seeming
to hold it between the hands, its color by pointing to objects of the
same hue; perhaps by the action of shooting into a tree, picking up
the supposed fallen game, and plucking feathers. These are continued
until understood, and if one sign or combination of signs proves to
be successful it will be repeated on the next occasion by both persons
engaged, and after becoming familiar between them and others will be
more and more abbreviated. Conventionality in signs largely consists
in the form of abbreviation which is agreed upon. When the signs of
the Indians have from ideographic form thus become demotic, they may
be called conventional, but still not arbitrary. In them, as in all
his actions, man had at the first a definite meaning or purpose,
together with method in their subsequent changes or modifications.

Colonel Dodge gives a clear account of the manner in which an
established sign is abbreviated in practice, as follows: "There are an
almost infinite number and variety of abbreviations. For instance, to
tell a man to 'talk,' the most common formal sign is made thus: H