Huntsville gazette., 1886-06-05
FOR BAD SPELLERS.
Letters That Will Twist Them
selves Most Unaccountably.

IA CuIlOuS pdpCA OA OuiloSAdPuys
by DR.. Grace Peckham, printed in the
Medical Record, is suggestive of the
whimsical peculiarities of people in re-
gard to spelling. 1t is likely to be ia
sisted upon by those of pedagogic
turn of mind that an educated person
must never make mistake in spelling,
or that the least blunder in the group
ing together of the letters forming a
word is convincing proof that the in
tellectual training of an individual is
far from being perfect. 1t will be
found in daily experience that to be abb
solutely perfect in spelling is by no
means to be taken as criterion of an
educated man or woman. There are
the queerest and strangest twists in q
mans mind, for there are certain words
over which people stumble, and they
will live all their lives in hazy condi-
ton about the spelling Of them.
The case presents itself to the writer
of a gentleman whose essays are con-
sidered valuable for their thought and
excellent as to style, who with such
simple words as ''there'' and "their"
invariably blunders when he writes
them. As to the grammatical values
of these two words, it would be an in
suit to him if he were charged with not
having the dearest appreciation of
them. Looking over his manuscript
the distinctive "i'' appears now and
then, but only right by chance. In
three pages ofhis copy once the essay
list has corrected the word, and once in
trying to make "there" right he has
interpolated an s'i'' and made it all
wrong. The gentleman himself ac-
know1edges this strange freak, for he
says:
II appreciate fully the difference be-
tween the two words. think their
the possessive plural and see the H.
but I'can't always write it. If any one
else made the mistake in his copy /
might or might not correct it. If it
were printed, the blunder would strike
me at once. If could dictate would
have a typewriter. / have tried to
correct these absurd 'tht irs' and
there's but when do / halt over them
and puzzle over them exactly as / did
when l was seven years old. l have
thought of inventing two signs for
those cursed words. did try, but it
was of no use. As far as there and
their go, shall remain an ass all my
life
In order to determine whether the
informant might not be eccentric, in
sisting on some mental disturbance he
did not really have, the writer of this
paper asked the gentleman to take a
pen and print ''there'' and .'their,"
and then to introduce the two words
into sentence. This was done with
out a mistake, the gentleman saying:
81 am doing it under stress" About
ten days afterward note was received
from this gentleman, not long one,
perhaps of fifteen lines, and ''there"
and "their," occurring five times, were
misspelled three times. The gentle
man laughed afterward and said: 81
am now going for the rest of my days
to spell all the there's there, no
matter under what circumstances, and
then half my chances of error will be
remoyed.l must be right once in
twice. he gravely concluded.
Here is really curious case of an
other literary man, who contributes
very clever fiction to the magazines.
This is his absolute and truthful confess
sion: II am afraid to give my ma
terial to an editor who is not thorough
ly acquainted with me or my anteced-
ents, and who has not already bought
my stories, or who does not know that
what l write people like to read, for l
am that unfortunate creature whose
spelling may be good or bad, according
to circumstances. In other words, /
belong to that miserable category of
human beings who are to be classed
among the accidental spellers.' What
dol mean by that? I may write fifty
pages of manuscript with very few
errors of spelling, then all of a sudden
on page fifty-one will come blunder
after blunder. Words correctly spelled
and used over and over again are all
wrong now. My mind of a sudden halts
and refuses to arrange the letters proper
ly. My little boy eight years old would
deserve thrashing for such vulgar
blunders. My wife will. sometimes
read my copy and clean it up, but
when / am in a hurry can not wait
for her. Do you want to listen to the
story of my humiliation? I took a
book / had made some time ago to a
well known publisher. He knew me
by reputation, and was politely re-
ceived. The subject had chosen
seemed to suit him. He had the
temerity to read the first page of my
manuscripts; then he suddenly halted.
and was at once aware that he had
found certainly one, maybe q half
dozen, mistakes in spelling. Under
ordinary circumstances | might have
corrected the blunders, but if the sale
of my work, or my life, had depended
on spelling right off the doubtful words
I could not have done it. I had no
idea how to spell them. ! was con-
scious that they were wrong, but the
geography, the picture, Of the word
n - x,,r