Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES I Have ventured to write these notes in explanation of matters that could not be covered in an hour's address, hoping that some might find an empty hour for their perusal, and count it not ill spent if aught of interest or of value be secured, or perhaps a misunderstanding prevented, or, better than either, a door to larger learning be opened. They are not very numerous, nor very lengthy, remembering the wisdom of Willibald Alexis: "Vide Antworten und Wegweiser sind schlim- mer als keine." 1 The society was organized at the ancient college of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, December 5, 1776, by five students —John Heath, Richard Booker, Thomas Smith, Armistead Smith, and John Jones. It was then little more than a social club, but rose to serve a higher cause in days of greater national prosperity. 2 Alexander William Kinglake, Eothen, or Traces of Travel, brought home from the East (New York, 1864), p. 2. The journey was made in 1835, and the charming book first published in 1844. There are few more sensitive and delightful books of travel. 8 In the excavations on the site of Samaria conducted by representatives of Harvard University there were found seventy-five ostraca inscribed in the Phoenician character in the period of Ahab, king of Israel, and containing such legends as this: "In the tenth year. From Abiezer to Shemarjau. A jar of old wine for Asa. From the hill." D. G. Lyon, Hebrew Ostraca from Samaria. Harvard Theological Review, January, 1911, p. 136f. 4 Many thousands of the inscribed clay tablets excavated in the mounds that cover the ancient cities of Babylonia and Assyria deal with such business records as these. The contribution which they make to our knowledge of ancient life may be studied in C. H. W. Johns, Babylonian and Assyrian L...