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PHILANTHROPY-BUT FIFTY PER CENT. 63 harmonious intonation, few and simple sounds, and regular construction make it very easy to learn through the ear, and to reproduce on any phonetic system of notation, and as a matter of fact, blind people are found to enjoy it much. For a blind man to come to an international congress and be able to compare notes with his fellow-blind from all over the world must be a lifting of the veil between him and the outer world, coming next to receiving his sight. To witness this spectacle alone might almost convince a waverer as to the utility of the common language.

                            XVIII
                       IDEAL V. PRACTICAL

FROM the early days of the Esperanto movement there has flowed within it a sort of double current. There is the warm and genial Gulf Stream of Idealism, that raises the temperature on every shore to which it sets and calls forth a luxuriant growth of friendly sentiment. This tends to the enriching of life. There is also, the cooler current of practicality, with a steady drive towards material profit. At present the tide is flowing free, and taken at the flood, may lead on to fortune; the two currents pursue their way harmoniously within it, without clashing, and sometimes mingling their waters to their mutual benefit. But as the movement is sometimes dismissed contemptuously as a pacifist fad or an unattainable ideal of universal brotherhood, it is as well to set the matter in its true light. It is true that the inventor of Esperanto, Dr. Zamenhof, of Warsaw, is an idealist in the best sense of the word, and that his language was directly inspired by his ardent wish to remove one cause of misunderstanding in his distracted country. He has persistently refused to make any profit out of it, and declined to accept a sum which some enthusiasts collected as a testimonial to his disinterested work.