St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-12-23
dent invited Republican senators to the White
house to confer about appointments.
THE LAWLER SYSTEM.

THE LA LEX S4SIEMs
There will be disposition to make fun
of Congressman LAwLER's bill ''to test
and try the science of spelling" 1t will
he rich food for the mirthful newspaper
paragrapher and will doubtless relieve the
monotony of congressional life by affOrding
opportunity for many gibe and jest from
his brother congressman. Mr.. LAwLER
has one advantage, however. He can stand
good deal of rough joking. He has passed
through the ordeal of adverse criticism from
the Chicago newspapers, and now his hide
is as tough as an elephants. Consequently
the shafts of the humorist and the darts of
the paragrapher fall as harmlessly upon
him as do the javelins cast by the hand OF
the dweller on the Nile upon the back OF
the hippopotamus. In fact Mr.. LAwLER
is not a man to be laughed down. They
tried that game on Mr.. LAWYER when he
was candidate for congress from a Chicago
district, but the more they laughed the big
ger Mr.. LAWYERS majority grew. Hav-
ing ridden into power and prominence over
the derisive scorn of his political enemies,
Mr.. LAWYER proposes to immOrtalize him
self by securing the passage of bill which
will lay the foundation for the greatest re-
form in the worlds history. The great de-
mand of the age is reform in the system
of spelling. With an intuitive faculty for
penetrating the inner recesses of truth and
bringing to view the hidden mines of wealth
concealed there, possessed by no other
statesman of the day, Mr.. LAwLER
has detected what it is that is causing
all this trouble which is knocking the
times out of joint. 1t is bad spelling.
And Mr.. LAwLER is going to straighten
things out by correcting the evil. With
peculiar sense of the fitness of things, he
proposes to establish the first government
reform spelling school in Chicago. He is
going to commence at the seat and center
of bad spelling and work outward until the
whole country is reformed. Mr.. LAWYER
lives in Chicago and knows from personal
experience the difficulties to be encountered
in that locality in learning to spell correctly.
He is a constant reader of the daily papers
published in that town and his sensitively-
cultured soul is veXed from day to day by
the photographed defects which prevail
around him. Now that he has been res
cued from this Sodom and Gomorrah of bad
spelling and is seated on the pinnacle OF ma
tional fame, in the kindness of his generous
nature he looks down upon the poor, be-
nighted children of his native city with
commiseration, and would gather them to-
gether under his autographed wings as
hen doth her brood. Mr.. LAwLER is on
the right track and we want him to stick to
it. But as he is something of an amateur
in reform work we hope he will accept our
suggestions in the same spirit OF kindness
in which we tender them. You have made
mistake, Mr.. LAWYER, and you are doing
injustice to yourself by asking the govern
ment to adopt the STORY system of spell
ing. 1t is the LAwLER system the coun-
try wants. Your well-known mod
esty doubtless prompted you to
use Mr.. SToRY's name instead of your own.
But if we are going to have reform in this
direction let us have the best in the shop.
In the first place Mr.. STORY is dead. The
system IN use in the land whittier the once
eminent journalist has gone may be all right,
but it is not available here. What we want
now is a system of spelling that the country
can catch on to easily. The LAwLER
system fills the void exactly. 1t is a gem
of phoneticism and is ornate with brevity.
As a single illustration of the improvement
of the new over the old system take the
word in the old Eclectic spelling books,
which has been the cause of more heroic
struggles on the part of English-speaking
urchins to frame and pronounce correctly
than was required of the barons to wrest
magma charta from King JOHN; we refer to
the word which is spelled in the modern
school series p-h-t-h-i-s-i-c, but which under
the LAWYER system would be reduced from
a compound to a simple word of four let
tiers, namely, tizk. The amount of labor
saved to the American youth by this one
change would be worth ten times over the
amount of the paltry $50, 600 appropriation
asked for by the LAwLER bill. The eyes of
the country are upon the Chicago states
man and the national heart is in sympathy
with him. Now that he has made the
plunge we hope to see him strike out boldly
and call no halt until he has brought the
nation up to a standard of correct orthog-
raphy.
| INDIAN WHEAT.