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"READING maketh a full man; conference a ready man; writing an exact man." -- From a quotation of Bacon.

Suppose you couldn't write longhand or use a typewriter. Suppose you couldn't talk well enough to make yourself understood except in the most simple of spoken communication. Would you or could you write a twenty thousand word article on an ideal you cherished?

Imagine yourself in a room of such a character that you could look out and see all that was going on in the world, but couldn't speak or express yourself in any way to that world. Imagine the urge you would have to give voice to your ideas.

Every living person has barriers of a sort erected between himself and the world. It is a fact that many persons in possession of unimpaired voice and senses are still cut off from the fullest enjoyment of life by an inability to express themselves. However, this is not a "dynamic personality" article. We are mainly interested in those, who, by physical disability or sense impairment, find a plainly defined barrier in the way of their expression.

There is a chap out in Grand Junction, Colorado, who has written a twenty thousand word article on an ideal society for the physically and mentally handicapped. He cannot speak nor write. He did it by arranging lettered blocks in a row. Mistakes made by his imperfect muscular coordination could be corrected by patient, repeated attempts. When he completed a few words or a sentence, someone copied it for him. What they copied proved that there was a valuable brain back of the all but impenetrable wall between thought and expression.

A typewriter company has as a slogan, "To save time is to lengthen life." The Architectural and Mechanical Hints Group would like to paraphrase that into, "To cut out lost energy in communication is not only to lengthen life but to immeasurably enrich the fuller minutes."

The one-handed person can use an old model typewriter with the double keyboard including capitals, or, he can devise some simple mechanical arrangement for using foot, leg, or body muscles to operate the shift key.

There are innumerable combinations of physical disability of extremities, but, provided that there are left at least some good muscles with good coordination, some mechanical adaptation to the ordinary typewriter is possible.

The case of the spastic, where muscular coordination is the major problem, is more difficult. How about adapting an electric typewriter to the principle of operation of an adding machine? A letter pressed would not print until a "Print" bar was depressed and, like an adding machine, it could be fixed so that pressing the right key after a mistake would release the one pressed in error.

With modern advantages in electrical and mechanical equipment, writing instruments could be devised for the seeing and the blind; instruments that would require only one simple muscular movement as against the nice coordination of movements required in present devices.

The economic dividends of allowing every person isolated by physical disability the best means of aided expression possible can only be conjectured; the spiritual benefits would be immediate and far-reaching. We can think of no better field for some small endowed foundation than in the providing the brains and money to help release those unusual brains from the prison of silence.