Now let us return for a moment to the little fellow with his saw who
suddenly appeared in the story of the old queen. Evidently he had
something to do with a saw.

A "saw" is either a tool which you find in a carpenter shop or it means
the past tense of the verb "to see."

This is what had happened to the word during the course of many
centuries.

First of all it had meant a man with a saw.

Then it came to mean the sound which we reproduce by the three modern
letters, s, a and w. In the end the original meaning of carpentering was
lost entirely and the picture indicated the past tense of "to see."

A modern English sentence done into the images of ancient Egypt will
show you what I mean.

[Illustration: eye bee leaf eye saw giraffe]

The [Illustration: eye] means either these two round objects in your
head which allow you to see, or it means "I," the person who is talking
or writing.

A [Illustration: bee] is either an animal which gathers honey and pricks
you in the finger when you try to catch it, or it represents to verb "to
be," which is pronounced the same way and which means to "exist." Again
it may be the first part of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have." In this