W.C.

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THE LETTER B.

"Or like a lamb, whose dam away is fet,
He treble _baas_ for help, but none can get."
SIDNEY.


Its pronunciation is supposed to resemble the bleating of a sheep;
upon which account the Egyptians represented the sound of this letter
by the figure of that animal. It is also one of those letters which
the eastern grammarians call _labial_, because the principal organs
employed in its pronunciation are the lips. With the ancients, B as a
numeral stood for 300. When a line was drawn above it, it stood for
3,000, and with a kind of accent below it, for 200.

P.T.W.

* * * * *


A DOUBLE.

(_To the Editor._)