The New York herald., 1922-12-10
By ALGERNON TASSIN and ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE

English Language" and for twenty years
it went by this ponderous name. But the
name quite msrepresented his main idea
for he was our first smplified speller
81 am convinced he said, "that sense
and convenience will sooner or later get
the better of the present absurd practice
in spelling. 1t is now the work of years
for children to learn to spell: and, after
all, the business is rarely accomplished.
He tried to leave out all the silent let
ters and to spell according to sound. We
have not yet adopted this part of his wise
idea of spelling-don't you wish we had:
You cannot, therefore, blame the people
of hundred years ago for clinging to any
of the absurd practices of the past when
we are doing the same thing. Your his
torical eyes should see both ways, you
know; and suppose you use them the
next time you are tempted to blame any
body in the past.
He did not get his Ideas of spelling all
at once, or even venture to put them
before the public when he got them II
was only the extraordinary success of the
Spelling Book which prepared the way.
1t created the same sort of craze that the
new singing by note had done in the
later Colonial days To their singing
schools all the villages now added SPELL
ing bees Beginning with a sale of two
hundred thousand a year. he sold twenty
four million copies before he died. When
he saw his success he set about a more
pretentious work. Indeed nothing in that
day or even in this could possibly be more
pretentious. To-day we would have a
hundred people working on what he ac-
complished single handed. An American
Dictionary of the English Languagel
When he finished it he said he now in
tended to make "a complete and compre-
hensive one" although you might have
thought this was complete enough to sat
isfy anybody, since it contained five thou
sand more words than the great dictionary
which the English DR. Johnson had made
not so many years before For twenty
years he worked on his new dictionary,
and he was working on his first revision
of it when death took the pen out of his
hand i'm 1S43.
People who wanted to cling to the old
We're scandaliZed at his impudence in
thinking that anybody could want q bet
ter dictionary than DR. Johnson's. Let
it be called Noah's Ark" stormed The
Portfolio in Philadelphia, full of its foul
and unclean things." And some people
who thought that an educated man should
be occupying himself with politics rather
than spelling called him DR. Grammati-
cal Institute One editor of a newspaper
was so offensive that the little, bird like
gentleman challenged him to "a duel The
editor declined. saying that the Doctor
should be content with the English Ian
guage as a weapon
Yet what is the consequence? Webster
is now the word for dictionary. The book
you use is even fatter. and it is a much
improved edition of the old gentleman:
but great deal of his work is there just
as his tireless pen left ii. Nor could the
more thorough work of later days have
been done without the pioneer labor of
DR.. Grammatical Institute. His Ameri-
can Dictionary is now called The Inter
national. 1t is a wise change indicative
of the wise change inside. For determined
little Noah Webster was like the rest of
our patriots in those early days Some
things he thought patriotic were not so.
Though we see far more clearly than he,
there are many people to-day who want to
do the same thing that he did. They not
only want to have America speak in her
own voice which was the wise part of his
patriotism: but they want America to dis