Some thoughtful person once declared that "the pen is mightier than the sword" and thus opened up a question which has been the subject of debate for many, many-years. Of course the phrase was used in a general sense, implying that the written word has more power and influence than have the implements of war. But it is interesting to note the fact that the statement taken literally is at present well night out of date.

To modernize the statement and to make it true to the present day would have to put it something like this: "The typewriter is mightier than poison gas." The facts which this illustrates are only too true. The art of writing is fast becoming a lost art in our modern civilization; while the days when the sword was regarded as the symbol of battle have even more completely disappeared.

Writing, or what is now called writing, is still of course in common use, but the modern tendency seems to be for everyone to ignore the recognized signs which represent the alphabet and to develop a species of short hand, intelligible only to themselves. This is only too evident in present day business life, where practically all correspondence is typewritten. Business men realize the difficulty of interpretting letters written in ordinary long hand, and they save themselves trouble by arranging their transactions through the medium of a typewriter.

In college the same tendency, though perhaps not to so great an extent, is to be distinctly observed. Any knowledge of the art of writing which the student may have acquired before coming to the University is soon lost upon his arrival, and the present objectionable system of taking notes compels him to fall in line with his fellow students in inventing a suitable method of short hand to enable him to take down the maximum number of facts in the minimum amount of time. Indeed, on the few occasions when he is compelled to write in examinations the results are decidedly poor, and it is extraordinary how the examiners and readers are able to translate the scrawls presented to them.

But although the University may be responsible for spoiling the writing of some students, the general had writing of school children is remarkable Schools at the present day pay little attention to the actual art of writing and the children are hurried on to other things before they have their letters properly formed. If writing is not taught, something else must be, and typewriting seems to fill the breach as well as anything. Possibly it may no be many years before students at the University may be attending lectures and examinations in company with a pocket typewriter. The Pennsylvanian.