Note 104 — THE LOVES OF THE BOY AND GIRL AT SCHOOL.

Arab. “Lauh.” A bit of thin board washed white used for lessons as slates are amongst us, and as easily cleaned because the inks contain no minerals. It is a long parallelogram with triangular ears at the short sides; and the shape must date from ages immemorial as it is found, throughout Syria and its adjoinings, in the oldest rock inscriptions to which the form serves as a frame. Hence the “abacus” or counting table derives from the Gr. ἄβαζ a slab (or in Phenician “sand”), dust or sand in old days having been strewed on a table or tablet for schoolboys’ writings and mathematical diagrams.