Arizona republican., 1893-01-21
TRICKS OF THE MEMORY
Speakers and Writers Sometimes
 Get Badly Mixed.
some of the Difficulties in Grammar and Spelling Which Often Beset Evon the Most Thorough
 Scholars.

One of the queerneSses with which writers have tJ contend is an occasional puZzleheadedneSS over perfectly we'll known point of photography or gram mar word that one has probably spelled correctly all ones life suddenly swerves over into the doubtful orthog- raphy column. Is it ''ingulf, ' ''engulf," or "engulph?" one queries, with pen poised. Is it ''appal" or ''apall?' Fan tasy" or ''phantasy?" and so on indetin- itely. To be sure, there is the diCtion- ary, but, asks the Boston Common wealth, who wants to learn his A-B-Cs over again or to look up the spelling of everyday words? It is a curious fact that, left to themselves, the fingers will generally spell word correctly. It is tn the hesitation that certainty is lost There can be not doubt that the fingers of awriter acquire a sort of automatic edu- cation. Even when doubt as to the right spelling of a word has crossed the mind the hand will usually bring the letters into form if given it's course. It is as if it consciously reasoned: "I have always driven the pen so and so, having begun sow But once hampered by the spirit of investigation, the irresolute hand inclines toward the Unabridged.
 The matter is worse where parts of speech entangle themselves Rules and regulations flatten themselves out and only a helpless tioundering among pronouns, antecedents and correlativcs seems for the time possible In one of N.1l 1..AN. |, writes: For the last week, while l was finishing the story, l galloped along without feeling it, like the old post horses. Do you remember how the fore legs of those post horses quiv- cred and how their heads dropped when they came to the journeys end? That's me, my dear, that's me. Good God! Is me grammar? Ought it to be T.? My poor father paid ninety pounds year for my education, and 1 give you my sacred word of honor am not sure whether it is me or T." Probably Willlic Collins could have made pretty straight guess on this point, but those little alterations come upon us some times when we should be slow to stake anything upon our correctness, though another person, blundoring in the same way. would be instantly arraigncd be- fore the bar of our correct and scandal ized judgment, just ss we serve mcritcd condemnation upon fellow mortals who display the identical faults of which we are ourselves guilty.
 Valuable speakers and voluminous writers probably experience little of this trouble. The spouting geyser of words never fails them, and for this they are to be congratulated; yet it is a consolation to those of less oratorical ability to know that great writers and speakers learn to curb their flowing speech rather than give vent to it. Prof Shedd states that in the last half of NCbstcrs public life he learned to reject the vague words that come thick and thronging when the mind is aroused. He grew more select and precise. and presently, as one said, every word weighed a pOund.' This style of speaking or writing cannot be driven through with the velocity cn- joycd when one is more careless of re. suits. The word fitly chosen is the word tO be striycu for, and, such is the perversity of inanimate things, it is pre- Ciscly the word that sometimes fails to come at call.