FEW people, probably, have any adequate idea of the great difficulties in which arithmetic would be involved were it not for the happy invention of the Arabic numerals. Here is a very simple little sum in addition put Roman fashion.

The reader will find it “a nice amusement,” as the model papa always tells his daughters, to work it out as it stands without having recourse to Arabic notation:

None of these figures reach two thousand, and yet what a hopeless task to sum them up without an abacus! But that is, indeed, a small matter. Here are two better tests of the impossibility of arithmetic without Arabic notation:

Multiply (all in Roman figures) MDCCXLIV by DCLXXXIV, and divide MCCXLIII by XLV. Nothing could be simpler than these two sums, and yet it requires considerable intellect and very close attention to work them out on paper with the Roman symbols.—Cornhill Magazine.