Daniel Webster, in a eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, introduced an imaginary speech by Adams in favor of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The concluding words were, "It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment,—Independence now, and Independence forever." The same supposed speech opened with the famous sentence, "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my heart and my hand to this vote." This sentence was derived from an actual conversation held between Adams and Jonathan Sewall in 1774, and duly recorded in the "Works of John Adams," vol. iv. p. 8: "I answered that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country, was my unalterable determination." It will be noticed that Adams's phrase "Swim or sink" in lieu of "Sink or swim" adds to the logical unity of the sentence at the expense of its euphony. Long before Adams, Peele had said, "Live or die, sink or swim" (Edward I.),-less tautological, but less magnificent.

Index. In early English literature a number of words were at various periods used to indicate a list or summary of the topics treated in a book,―viz., Register, Calendar, Summary, Syllabus, Index, and Table, or Table of Con tents. After a faint struggle the first four dropped out of the contest, and left the field clear to the two other contestants, who eventually compromised their claims. The table of contents became the name of the ordered and sometimes classified list placed usually at the beginning of a book, and the index that of the alphabetical list placed usually at the end. On the whole, we may say that the victory remained with the word Index, inasmuch as the alphabetical list is infinitely the more valuable of the two.

Yet its value and the degree of honor to which it is legitimately entitled were not always acknowledged. In older English authors we find continual gibes at what was known as index-learning. Thus, John Glanville writes in his " Vanity of Dogmatizing," Methinks 'tis a pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learnt from an index, and a poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another's treasure." And Swift and Pope both use an image which has become classic. In the "Dunciad," Old Dulness explains to her votaries How index-learning turns no student pale,

Yet holds the eel of science by the tail.

Swift was before Pope. In the "Tale of a Tub" he had said,—

The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold: either, first, to serve them as men do lords,-learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or, secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the Index, by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms; therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back door. For the arts are all in a flying march, and therefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear. Thus physicians discover the state of the whole body by consulting only

what comes from behind.

But before the time of Pope and Swift the pros and cons had been admirably though quaintly summarized by Thomas Fuller, and the value of the index triumphantly vindicated. "I confess," he says, "there is a lazy kind of learning which is only indical, when scholars (like adders, which only bite the horse's heels) nibble but at the tables, which are calces librorum, neglecting the body of the book. But, though the idle deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used by them, but on them), pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit thereof, and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation of an index, most used by those who most pretend to contemn it." Carlyle heartily approved this sentiment. His citations of the German historians who supplied the materials for his "Frederick the Great" form one continuous wail

over their neglect to provide indexes as a guide through the wide-spread, inorganic, trackless desert of their writings "to the poor half-peck of cinders hidden in wagon-load of ashes, no sieve allowed."" Lord Campbell is reported to have proposed that any author who published a book without an index should be deprived of the benefit of the Copyright Act.

It was towards the close of the sixteenth century that the value of indexes first began to be appreciated, though only in a staccato sort of fashion. Some books, like Lyndewood's "Constitutiones Provinciales" (London, 1525), Juan de Pineda's "History of the World" (Salamanca, 1588), and Baronius's "Annales Ecclesiastici" (1588 to 1607), possessed full and excellent indexes, which are still the admiration of the scholar and the bibliophile. And even where an author published an important book without an index he seems sometimes to have had an uneasy consciousness that he was not doing the right thing by the reader. Thus, Howel's "Discourse concerning the Precedency of Kings" (1664) has a preliminary notice, nominally from "The Bookseller to the Reader," which runs as follows: "The reason why there is no Table or Index added hereunto is, that every page in this work is so full of signal remarks that were they couch'd in an Index it would make a volume as big as the book, and so make the Postern Gate to bear no proportion to the building." This is amusing enough as a magnificent bit of egotism, but the plea is one which the true index-lover cannot for a moment admit.

An index need not be dry. There are instances in literature where it is the most interesting, nay, delightful, portion of the book. Take Prynne's "Histrio-Mastix." Carlyle rightly refers to it as "a book still extant, but never more to be read by mortal." Well, many a mortal might still find amusement from its index. It is very evident that the index, and perhaps the index alone, had been read by Attorney-General Noy. When engaged in the prosecution of Prynne for publishing this very book, he pointed out that the accused "says Christ was a Puritan in his Index." Here are a few amusing extracts from the same index:

Crossing of the face when men go to plays shuts in the Devil.

Devils-inventors and fomenters of stage-plays and dancing. Have stage-plays in hell every Lord's-day night.

Heaven-no stage-plays there.

Kings-infamous for them to act or frequent Playes or favour Players.

Players-many of them Papists and most desperate wicked wretches.

These bits of wisdom, so lightly and succinctly treated in the index, are weighted down in the book itself with such a mass of verbiage as to be absolutely forbidding.

Mr. Burton, in his "Book-Hunter," justly observes that an expert controversialist need not exhaust himself in the body of the book, but "if he be very skilful he may let fly a few Parthian arrows from the index." This great truth had already been discovered and acted upon by Dr. William King, whom D'Israeli calls the inventor of satirical and humorous indexes. Thus, in his index to the famous book which the Christ Church wits published against Bentley's "Phalaris" (1698), we have reference to Dr. Bentley's "modesty and decency in contradicting great men" followed by the names of Plato, Selden, Grotius, Erasmus, and ending with "everybody." The last entry, "his profound skill in criticism," refers the inquirer "from beginning to end."

A further elaboration of this idea was to take the work of an antagonist and turn it to ridicule in a satirical index. This was not infrequently done for political effect, as in the case of William Bromley, a Tory member of Parliament who, in 1705, was a candidate for the Speakership. His opponents

republished a juvenile book of travels which he had issued twelve years before with an index which was full of malicious humor. Thus:

Eight pictures take up less room than sixteen of the same size, p. 14.

February an ill season to see a garden in, p. 53.

Three several sorts of wine drank by the author out of one vessel, p. 101.

The English Jesuites Colledge at Rome may be made larger than 'tis by uniting other Buildings to it, p. 132.

The Duchess dowager of Savoy, who was grandmother to the present Duke, was mother to his father, p. 243.

Dr. Parr had in his possession a copy of this book so indexed which had formerly belonged to Bromley himself. In it was the manuscript note, "This edition of these travels is a specimen of the good nature and good manners of the Whigs. This printing of my book was a very malicious proceeding; my words and meaning being very plainly perverted in several places. But the performances of others may be in like manner exposed, as appears by the like tables published for the travels of Bishop Burnet and Mr. Addison."

Perhaps it was with some premonitory anticipations of these wilful perversions of the index-maker that a once celebrated Spaniard, quoted by the bibliogra pher Nicolaus Antonius, held that the index of a book should be made by the author, even if the book itself were written by some one else. Macaulay, too, recognized how an author's words can be turned against himself when he wrote to his publishers, "Let no d-d Tory make the Index to my History."

Nevertheless, if authors were to make their own indexes we should be deprived of many good stories of mistakes and misapprehensions, which, however exasperating to the anxious inquirer, have afforded pleasant food for mirth for many generations. The story about Mr. Best's great mind is a classic. As usually quoted it occurred as an entry in the index to Binns' "Justice," thus:

Best, Mr. Justice, his great mind.

And when the reader turned to the designated page, full of anticipatory admiration, he found only "Mr. Justice Best said that he had a great mind to commit the man for trial." Alas! the ruthless scientific investigator who has deprived us of William Tell, and King Alfred's cakes, and Washington's hatchet, could not allow this little gem to escape his devastating eye. Beyond a doubt the entry does not occur in Binns' "Justice." Nobody has been able to find it elsewhere. In all probability it is an anecdote invented out of the whole cloth as a personal fling against Sir William Draper Best, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1824 to 1829, and it is even said to have been invented by Leigh Hunt and first published in the Examiner. Another classic is the oft-quoted entry,

Mill on Liberty.

" on the Floss.

Mr. Wheatley, in his excellent little monograph "What is an Index ?" assures us that this is not an invention, but actually occurred in a catalogue. And he gives a number of companion-blunders which are quite as good.

The following are from the index of the "Companion to the Almanack" (London, 1643):

Cotton, Sir Willoughby.

price of.

Style.

And the following are perpetuated in the indexes to various editions of Pepys's Diary:"

In one of the volumes of the Rolls series there is a blunder of a different kind. Jude in the body of the book is misprinted Inde, consequently the "land of Jude," that is, Judea, is indexed India, with the following extraordinary result:

India . . . conquered by Judas Maccabeus and his brethren, 56.

A similar mistake occurs in a French bibliographical list, where Whiteknights, the former seat of a Lord Blandford, is given as "le Chevalier Blanc." Another foreign book cautiously but correctly explains that a learned society of the West Riding is not a "société hippique."

Index-makers are often betrayed by similarity of names, or by different renditions of the same name, into ludicrous blunders. Thus, in an index to the "Letters of Sir George Cornewall Lewis" (1870) appear the following entries:

Mill, John, his article on Civilization, 49. His Dialogue on Theory and Practice, 49. His "History of British India," 72. His book on Logic, 120, 245.

Mill, John Stuart, his letter to Sir A. Duff Gordon, referring to Mr. Austin's article on Centralization, 153.

Evidently in the index-maker's opinion John Mill and John Stuart Mill are two distinct persons. In revenge, John Mill and James Mill are blended into one. Turning first to p. 49, we find Sir George speaking in disparagement of a "dialogue on theory and practice in the London Review by old Mill in the character of Plato. Per contra," he adds, "there is an article on Civilization by John Mill which is worth reading." There may arise historians in the future who, on the joint evidence of the text and of the index, will construct a theory that at thirty years of age John Mill was prematurely old. This identification of the father and the son bears a certain literary analogy to the theological heresy of the Patripassians. Again, under reference to Archbishop Whately in the index appears "His book of gardening, 160." The inquirer, turning to page 160 for information about a book he has never heard of, learns, "Whately, the author of the book on gardening, was either the father or the uncle of the Archbishop of Dublin." From text and index combined it follows that Archbishop Whately was either his own father or his own uncle. Extraordinary as these mistakes may appear, they are not without parallel in our own and in foreign literature. Thus, in an edition of Vapereau's "Dictionnaire des Contemporains" John Forster the editor of the Examiner is mixed up with John Foster the moralist, and of Francis Newman we are told that his work on the "Soul" was responsible for numerous returns to the Christian faith. The index-maker who rolled Louis the Pious and St. Louis under one heading no doubt thought he had achieved a very clever feat and taught his author to be more careful of his epithets. Emperors and Popes are great snares to the index-makers; so are Ferdinands, Fredericks, Henrys,-any royal name which is to be found in more than one

country.

There are some mistakes, however, which are sufficiently venial. In the case of people who have two or three surnames, it is only natural that the index-maker should be at fault. It would not be easy at a first attempt to assign his proper position to Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer Lytton, first Lord Lytton and a baronet; and similar difficulties are suggested by the names

of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford. The rule which most authorities are now agreed upon, that the names of peers should be arranged under their titles and not their family names, is subject to numerous recognized exceptions. Though Lord Lytton would now go under Lytton, and the Earl of Oxford under Oxford, the Earl of Orford would be classed under Walpole, because that is the name by which he is familiarly known to the public. Another source of confusion is afforded by women who assume a new name with every marriage and remarriage.

A still more delicate point is involved in the case of George Eliot. During the larger portion of her authorial life she was known as Mrs. Lewes ; but she was never legally Mrs. Lewes. Her maiden name was Mary Ann Evans, her name by her last and only legal union was Mrs. Cross. Yet, on the whole, librarians prefer to catalogue her as Mrs. Lewes.

Cross-references are a frequent source of confusion to the careless or incompetent. We can all sympathize with Cobbett's complaint in his "Woodlands:" "Many years ago I wished to know whether I could raise birch-trees from the seed. I then looked into the great book of knowledge, the Encyclopædia Britannica :' there I found in the general dictionary,—

BIRCH tree-see Betula (Botany Index).

I hastened to Betula with great eagerness, and there I found,-
BETULA-see Birch tree.

That was all; and this was pretty encouragement."

Again, in Eadie's " Dictionary of the Bible" (1850) there is a reference

"Dorcas, see Tabitha," but there is no Tabitha to be seen when one looks where she ought to be.

Cross-referencing has other curiosities. In Hawkins's " Pleas of the Crown" there are some most amusing instances of apparent non sequiturs:

Assault, see Son.
Chastity, see Homicide.
Convicts, see Clergy.
Death, see Appeal.
King, see Treason.
Shop, see Burglary.
Sickness, see Bail,

Some index-makers make no cross-references, but enter the same subject under all its possible heads. This often leads to unnecessary duplications and increases the bulk of the index without corresponding gain. An instance may be cited from the index to St. George Mivart's " Origin of Human Reason," where a short story of a cockatoo appears no fewer than fifteen times :

Absurd tale about a Cockatoo, 136.

Anecdote, absurd one, about a Cockatoo, 136.

Bathos and a Cockatoo, 136.

Cockatoo, absurd tale concerning one, 136.

Discourse held with a Cockatoo, 136.

Incredibly absurd tale of a Cockatoo, 136.
Invalid Cockatoo, absurd tale about, 136.
Mr. R and tale about a Cockatoo, 136.
Preposterous tale about a Cockatoo, 136.
Questions answered by a Cockatoo, 136.
R, Mr., and tale about a Cockatoo, 136.
Rational Cockatoo, as asserted, 136.

Tale about a rational Cockatoo, as asserted, 136.
Very absurd tale about a Cockatoo, 136.

Wonderfully foolish tale about a Cockatoo, 136.

In the card catalogue at the Public Library in Boston is an interesting entry, “God, see Fiske, J.,” which reminds one that the heading to one of the