The New York herald., 1921-07-03
Dams Own Book Review

THE BLUE BACK SPELLING BOOK BY
Noah Webster Childhood Torture Publish
ing Company Ltd. New York.
TOR many years we have wanted to
r. say something to the author Of this
- volume, but the occasion has never
before presented itself The principal thing
we want to say is that the book is abomina-
BILE. It is poorly written, full of bad spelling
unnecessary words and is too long. We
spent many many unhappy hours trying TO
memorize it and did not succeed. We knew
very little more about the book upon leav-
ing school than we knew when we first took
our list down to the book store and p,lr-
chased the volume.
The most difficult word in the book to
SPELL that is. so far as we were concerned.
was "phthisic' This word sticks in our
minds for the reason that we were one day
knew absolutely at the end of the session
how to spell "phthisic' and we still know.
but we do not know what the word means
and probably never will because we will
never have occasion TO use it again after
writing this book review. Isn't 1t strange
that the very word we know best how TO
We know how to spell all right enough
for all practical purposes. In fact II II
were not for our well known modesty we
would not hesitate to say that taking 1t by
and large we are about the best speller in
this county, but, as we say, our modesty
prevents us from even alluding to the fact.
What we cannot do is to engage In "A spell
ing bee. We cannot conform TO the rules.
Take the word mississippi" for instance
If we were asked to spell Mississippi we
would proceed I'm this manner "M-i-double
ST double s-i double 81" which would ur-
doubtedy spell the word correctly. but that
would not do at "A spelling bee. At bee II
would be necessary to say: Mis-. mis-; s-i-s
sis. Missis slip. sip. Mssissip p-i. pi
Mississippi"
It would be our fate in trying 10 spell this
word that by the time we said miss" and
"mssis" and "sis" a few times we would get
run out Of the place for trying to firt with
the school teacher and would get a zero
mark on the entire lesson
lot Of persons do not know that the
Webster who wrote the spelling book is the
same man who wrote the dictionary He did
very well with the more pretentious work
but he failed very badly on the spelling book
II Is easy 20 get these notable characters
mixed up. anyway. There was a member of
a state Legislature down South making n
speech one day and during flight Of oratory
he said ain the words Of that llustrious
patriot Daniel Webster. Give me liberty
or give me death. He was astonished by
the laughter that followed so a colleague.
who sat next To him. plucked at his coat
sleeve and whispered:
Daniel Webster didn't say that; It was
Noah"
"Oh, shut up replied the rate orator;
Noah built the ark"
For one thing the book Is utterly out Of
date. Directly after tho poets achieved their
great labor saving reform by which they
are permitted 20 write poetry without going
70 the trouble Of rhyming the last words Of
every line, and before the cubists and futur-
lists had undertaken the task of teaching the
people not to expect to pictures upon
visiting picture gallery, the phonetic
spoilers had succeeded in convincing the
world that words ought 10 be spelled as they
sound, and IN doing so they destroyed utter
~ the value of Mr.. Websters spelling book
II is just as well that they did, because the
volume Il deadly dull and does not deserve
real place in Bells Letters