Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/384

370 ah) is the most sharply colored—a burning red—and o(in go) is of a deep blue. These colors Dr. Karsten associates with the use of these vowels as interjections, ah having the red hue of interest or surprise, O the blue shade of pity or regret; a (in may) is greenish, a (in cat) is yellow, in law dark brown; e (in tree) is white, i (in in) is grayish, o (in on) dull violet, oo is black, and u dusky grayish.

A lady of my acquaintance recognizes color associations only with certain proper names. Thus, with her, Cæsar is crimson, Theodore blue, Lillian white, Mary or May yellow, Ethel and its compounds lavender, Edith heliotrope. Only names of some marked quality seem to have any color at all. Thus John, James, and the like are without this attribute.

In his article on Word Color, already mentioned, Prof. Edward Spencer has given an interesting account of his own associations of color with words. The substance of his observations he has kindly condensed in a letter to me, from which I quote as follows, adding to it two or three suggestive paragraphs from his paper on Word Color:

"It is natural that the first assertion of the experience of double impressions should have been received with incredulity. I have vainly tried for years to find ears attentive to what I honestly believed a real and reasonable experience, and it is now a great satisfaction to me to see the remarkable growth of interest in this class of subjects.

"My own experience with this class of phenomena has been almost entirely confined to the observation of shade and color as being inseparably connected with characters and words. Word color was first observed by me at the age of six years. At the time it suddenly flashed upon my mind that stone was light in color and the word 'rock' was darker, each one quite nearly resembling the color of the article to which the name was applied. Soon after this time the Arabic figure 8 appeared a beautiful golden yellow. Next, when beginning the study of Greek, the letter θ (theta) appeared the color of pearl. Since then shade and color have manifested themselves in an ever-increasing list of characters and words, until they are now perceived in most of the letters and in all parts of speech in all the languages with which I have any acquaintance.

"All suggest to the mind an appearance of shade: some being very light; others dark, and others medium. Color is less often distinguished, but when seen it is even clearer than is the degree of shade. Beginning with one color—yellow, seen in 'rock'—the list has slowly increased until it now includes cream, pearl, black, gray, golden brown, orange, light blue, light and dark brown. The last mentioned was first noticed while writing these pages.