Darroch of Their Evolution from the Start Dr. Darroch was the speaker at! the meeting of the Literary Department of the American Women's Club held on Tuesday afternoon, Mrs. Earl Cressy taking the chair, and a very interesting lecture was given on the evolution. of the Chinese characters in their writing.
Lantern slide pictures were shown and Dr. Darroch explained the different signs and symbols as they. were in old times and how they had changed until they reached the present form; somewhat different, although some have preserved for over 4,000 years many of the original, characteristics.
At first the conveying of his thoughts by means of pictures was easy to the ancient writer, for he kept to things which he could see and feel, such as the sun, the moon, the hills, water, men and animals but it was when he found the need expressing something not concrete, must have been hard put to it to find a suitable design. For instance, perhaps he wanted to express, brightness or lustre, There was no material subject alone to give his meaning, and so to show his thought he drew a picture of both the sun and the moon shining together, the brightest things that he could think of and the character is almost the same today.
The Spirit of Inve In the same way when he wanted to use the verb to sce, then unknown, decided that to see clearly one shades the eyes with the hand, and accordingly drew a character composed of a hand over an eye. Luter the ancient writer wished to ex-or "great fortune" s0, returning to the idea used in the first example he took the two greatest enemies of man, fire and water and joined them together, There were many illustrations of, this sort and all of them were very interesting as each character was, portrayed in four stages of its; growth, from the time it was first invented and secing these together: one could easily connect the different strokes of the brush to construct the desired word, After these simple characters those of a more composite nature were explained which, though a little mote complicated and difficult to follow in places, were yet very interesting to the audience, and included some amusing notes on the ways of the Chinese fortune teller and how, he reasons his prophesies. Then after a few more explanations which there is no time or space to set down here as to how the Chinese writer arrived at his definition of the word "good," shown by the ie ture of a woman and a child the lecture was ended and the meeting, after a very enjoyable afternoon, broke up.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.