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Books Recommended
- Boys’ Book of Hiking, Edward Cave. Published by Doubleday, Page & Co. Price .50 cents
Sign Language
From the “Book of Woodcraft,” by permission of Ernest Thompson Seton. Doubleday, Page & Co. Price, $1.75
Do you know the Sign Language?
If not, do you realize that the Sign Language is an established mode of communication in all parts of the world without regard to native speech?
Do you know that it is so refined and complete that sermons and lectures are given in it every day, to those who cannot hear?
Do you know that it is as old as the hills and is largely used in all public schools? And yet when I ask boys and girls this question, “Do you use the Sign Language?” they nearly always say “No.”
Why should you talk the Sign Language? There are many reasons:
In this code you can talk to any other Woodcrafter without an outsider knowing or understanding.
It makes conversation easy in places when you must not speak aloud, as in school, during music, or by the bedside of the sick.
It is a means of far-signalling much quicker than semaphore or other spelling codes, for this gives one or more words in one sign.
It will enable you to talk when there is too much noise to be heard, as across the noisy streets.
It makes it possible to talk to a deaf person.
It is a wonderful developer of observation.
It is a simple means of talking to an Indian or a Woodcrafter of another nationality whose language you do not understand. This indeed is its great merit. It is universal. It deals not with words but with ideas that are common to all mankind. It is therefore a kind of Esperanto already established.
So much for its advantages; what are its weaknesses? Let us frankly face them:
It is useless in the dark;
It will not serve on the telephone;
It can scarcely be written;
In its pure form it will not give new proper names.
To meet the last two we have expedients, as will be seen, but the first two are insurmountable difficulties.
