How the alphabet was made

I`d know it was going to rain and I`d take my beaver-skin hood. Wouldn`t Mummy be surprised?`
Tegumai got up and danced. (Daddies didn`t mind doing those things in those days.) `More than that! More than that!` he said. `S`pose I wanted to tell you it wasn`t going to rain much and you must come down to the river, what would we draw? Say the words in Tegumai-talk first.`
`Shu-ya-las, ya maru. (Sky-water ending. River come to.) what a lot of new sounds! I don`t see how we can draw them.`
`But I dobut I do!` said Tegumai. `Just attend a minute, Taffy, and we won`t do any more to-day. We`ve got shu-ya all right, haven`t we? But this las is a teaser. La-la-la` and he waved his shark-tooth.
`There`s the hissy-snake at the end and the carp-mouth before the snakeas-as-as. We only want la-la,` said Taffy.
`I know it, but we have to make la-la. And we`re the first people in all the world who`ve ever tried to do it, Taffimai!`
`Well,` said Taffy, yawning, for she was rather tired. `Las means breaking or finishing as well as ending, doesn`t it?`
`So it does,` said Tegumai. `To-las means that there`s no water in the tank for Mummy to cook withjust when I`m going hunting, too.`
`And shi-las means that your spear is broken. If I`d only thought of that instead of drawing silly beaver pictures for the Stranger!`
`La! La! La!` said Tegumai, waiving his stick and frowning. `Oh bother!`
`I could have drawn shi quite easily,` Taffy went on. `Then I`d have drawn your spear all brokenthis way!` And she drew. (14.)
`The very thing,` said Tegumai. `That`s la all over. It isn`t like any of the other marks either.` And he drew this. (15.)
`Now for ya. Oh, we`ve done that before. Now for maru. Mum-mum-mum. Mum shuts one`s mouth up, doesn`t it? We`ll draw a shut mouth like this.` And he drew. (16.)
`Then the carp-mouth open. That makes Ma-ma-ma! But what about this rrrrr-thing, Taffy?`
`It sounds all rough and edgy, like your shark-tooth saw when you`re cutting out a plank for the canoe,` said Taffy.
`You mean all sharp at the edges, like this?` said Tegumai. And he drew. (17.)
“Xactly,` said Taffy. `But we don`t want all those teeth: only put two.`
`I`ll only put in one,` said Tegumai. `If this game of ours is going to be what I think it will, the easier we make our sound- pictures the better for everybody.` And he drew. (18.)
`Now, we`ve got it,` said Tegumai, standing on one leg. `I`ll draw `em all in a string like fish.`
`Hadn`t we better put a little bit of stick or something between each word, so`s they won`t rub up against each other and jostle, same as if they were carps?`
`Oh, I`ll leave a space for that,` said her Daddy. And very incitedly he drew them all without stopping, on a big new bit of birch-bark. (19.)
`Shu-ya-las ya-maru,` said Taffy, reading it out sound by sound.
`That`s enough for to-day,` said Tegumai. `Besides, you`re getting tired, Taffy. Never mind, dear. We`ll finish it all to- morrow, and then we`ll be remembered for years and years after the biggest trees you can see are all chopped up for firewood.`
So they went home, and all that evening Tegumai sat on one side of the fire and Taffy on the other, drawing ya`s and yo`s and shu`s and shi`s in the smoke on the wall and giggling together till her Mummy said, `Really, Tegumai, you`re worse than my Taffy.`
`Please don`t mind,` said Taffy. `It`s only our secret-s`prise, Mummy dear, and we`ll tell you all about it the very minute it`s done; but please don`t ask me what it is now, or else I`ll have to tell.`
So her Mummy most carefully didn`t; and bright and early next morning Tegumai went down to the river to think about new sound pictures, and when Taffy got up she saw Ya-las (water is ending or running out) chalked on the side of the big stone water-tank, outside the Cave.
`Um,` said Taffy. `These picture-sounds are rather a bother! Daddy`s just as good as come here himself and told me to get more water for Mummy to cook with.` She went to the spring at the back of the house and filled the tank from a bark bucket, and then she ran down to the river and pulled her Daddy`s left earthe one that belonged to her to pull when she was good.
`Now come along and we`ll draw all the left-over sound-pictures,` said her Daddy, and they had a most inciting day of it, and a beautiful lunch in the middle, and two games of romps. When they came to T, Taffy said that as her name, and her Daddy`s, and her Mummy`s all began with that sound, they should draw a sort of family group of themselves holding hands. That was all very well to draw once or twice; but when it came to drawing it six or seven times, Taffy and Tegumai drew it scratchier and scratchier, till at last the T-sound was only a thin long Tegumai with his arms out to hold Taffy and Teshumai. You can see from these three pictures partly how it happened. (20, 21, 22.)
Many of the other pictures were much too beautiful to begin with, especially before lunch, but as they were drawn over and over again on birch-bark, they became plainer and easier, till at last even Tegumai said he could find no fault with them. They turned the hissy-snake the other way round for the Z-sound, to show it was hissing backwards in a soft and gentle way (23); and they just made a twiddle for E, because it came into the pictures so often (24);
and they drew pictures of the sacred Beaver of the Tegumais for the B-sound (25, 26, 27, 28); and because it was a nasty, nosy noise, they just drew noses for the N-sound, till they were tired (29); and they drew a picture of the big lake-pike`s mouth for the greedy Ga-sound (30);
and they drew the pike`s mouth again with a spear behind it for the scratchy, hurty Ka-sound (31); and they drew pictures of a little bit of the winding Wagai river for the nice windy-windy Wa-sound (32, 33); and so on and so forth and so following till they had done and drawn all the sound-pictures that they wanted, and there was the Alphabet, all complete.
And after thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and after Hieroglyphics and Demotics, and Nilotics, and Cryptics, and Cufics, and Runics, and Dorics, and Ionics, and all sorts of other ricks and tricks (because the Woons, and the Neguses, and the Akhoonds, and the Repositories of Tradition would never leave a good thing alone when they saw it), the fine old easy, understandable AlphabetA, B, C, D, E, and the rest of `emgot back into its proper shape again for all Best Beloveds to learn when they are old enough.
But I remember Tegumai Bopsulai, and Taffimai Metallumai and Teshumai Tewindrow, her dear Mummy, and all the days gone by. And it was sojust soa little time agoon the banks of the big Wagai!