Otherwise the traveler, without an interpreter, cannot make himself understood, and do business outside his own country.
The want of a common means of communication therefore has long been recognized; and about that time some one had invented a somewhat imperfect method of universal speech, with the idea of having everybody learn it, and so be able to converse with the inhabitants of all lands without the well-nigh impossible task of learning five, or ten, or fifty different languages.
The idea impressed everybody as a good one, and enjoyed a considerable popularity for a time.

But practically this was soon found to be a clumsy and inadequate form of speech, also that many other drawbacks attended its adoption.
But the main idea held good; and since that time Volapuk, Bolak, Esperanto and Ido have appeared, but without meeting with great success.
The same disadvantages attend them, each and all.
In thinking the matter over and talking of it, one night at the old Squire's, that winter, Master Pierson hit on the best, most practical plan for a universal language which I have ever heard put forward.
"Latin is the foundation of all the modern languages of Christendom," he said.

"Or if not the foundation, it enters largely into all of them.
Law, theology, medicine and philosophy are dependent on Latin for their descriptive terms.

Without Latin words, modern science would be a jargon which couldn't be taught at all.

Without Latin, the English language, itself, would relapse to the crude, primitive Saxon speech of our ancestors.