Chapter 3

But Egghorn was now standing on his chair, and screaming, "Hup, hup, hup," with the most energetic violence.

"Oh, write it!" every one cried out to him.

They lifted Egghorn down from his chair, and he ran eagerly to his blackboard, upon which he wrote, "This is illiterate, this is unscholarly."

And again the convention cried out together, "We're not here to be scholarly, we're not here to be literate."

"Have yore way, gennlemen," said Jesse Willows, "I'll stand for anything."

"Well, I can't stand this any longer!" exclaimed Miss Appleby; and rising to her pretty feet, she continued, "Gentlemen, in your charitable solicitude for foreigners, you may be making our spelling easy for Lithuanians (though I doubt it), but you are making it quite impossible for the English."

Upon this a cold silence fell, and then, "And who are the English, madam?" asked Cottsill.

Miss Appleby gave her delightful brief laugh. "I'm sorry you don't know, sir," said she, "for I didn't come here to begin your education." And she sat down. There was an impulse in me to call her Gertrude, but I felt it to be premature.

A general murmuring confusion of consulting and dissenting voices now arose among the scholars.

"But what did you come here for?" I asked Miss Appleby.

"Not to see unbroken dogs put their muddy paws all over the greatest language in the world," she retorted.

"Dear me, dear me," I returned, with soothing deprecation, for she was plainly very much incensed, "then what did you come for?"

"Oh, for reasons," she returned evasively.

Doubts that I could not define began suddenly to fill my mind, and I said to her, "Didn't you write about Shakespeare?"

"A college joke," she answered contemptuously. "I'm writing a poem now. I shall call it, 'How we brought the Good Spelling from Ghent to Aix.'"

"Then you don't believe in the Higher Spelling?" I asked.

"No!" she declared, with defiance.

"Does Professor Willows?" I pursued.

"Hadn't you better ask him about that?" she replied.

I think my face must have turned the reddest that anger can paint faces; for now, at any rate, I had no doubts as to how I had been made game of in the private car. Yes, they had mocked me. The impudent young man had manufactured absurd spelling for my serious attention, and he and Miss Appleby had then made merry together over it, and over myself. But before I could frame a fitting rebuke to the frivolous though lovely young woman beside me, a distracting hubbub of voices was set up, and through this I heard Kibosh calling:--

"On your blackboards, gentlemen, on your blackboards."

The convention gradually heard him, too, and scholar after scholar bounded from his chair, seized a piece of chalk, and began to write. Only one was left, who stood at his place, pouring forth the most execrable sounds I have ever heard.

"Professor Dudelsacker has the floor," said Kibosh.

"Burrmeowskreeyiyiwurrburrwowwowmeow," went the professor.

"Turn that Central Pennsylvania Dutch quacker out!" shouted some one.

"I've resigned already meowowwow," squealed Dudelsacker, in a fury; and he took his departure at once.

But this brought us no calm. Twenty pieces of chalk were rattling on the blackboards like a platoon of busy telegraphic instruments. Each scholar was making his own list for the new dictionary of English, and I read the lists of Totts, Maverick, and Cottsill, so far as they had written them. Jesse Willows was writing, too, with sweeping flourishes; but I had ceased to place faith in his integrity.

Surracuse Beverly Fahms Cyar Yurrup Rud Cyard Surrup But Cyart Mawrul Cut Gyarden Sawrul Grantha Coat-house Kwawrul Anywheres} Awringe Everywheres} _Cottsill's list_ Amurrican Nowheres} Tremenjus Tremendious}

"Awringe," I murmured aloud, in ignorance of its meaning; but my own voice revealed to me that it was our chief Florida fruit, as pronounced by Lysander Totts, of Numa Pompilius, New York, discoverer of Cleopatra's true sex. The whole great West was rattling away on the boards behind me, but what I saw in front of me was enough to hold my attention; and my eyes were straying back and forth between awringe and grantha, when Totts, happening to glance up from his work, beheld the work of Maverick next him.

He stopped abruptly. "Rud?" he inquired of the professor from Fishball University, author of Pecan Nuts.

"Road," explained Maverick, writing out the old spelling. "Road, boat, coat."

"Hm," said Totts, with disapprobation.

"But what is grantha?" I whispered to Miss Appleby.

"Can it be a breakfast food?" she suggested; and again I wished to call her Gertrude.

Totts was still gazing at Maverick's list. "Hm. Yes," he repeated. "Bean talk from Boston. We don't want it."

"Are we phonetic or not?" returned Maverick, sharply.

But Totts had now caught sight of Cottsill's list. "Anywheres?" he read aloud. "Why anywheres? Rub all those out."

"I will not," declared the author of Nostalgia in the Lobster. "I guess if you can be phonetic, I can."

"I'm afraid they're skipping grantha," said Miss Appleby.

"Who says anywheres?" demanded Totts.

"I do," snapped Cottsill.

"Well, I don't," Totts replied. "And, what's more, I won't."

Cottsill raised his voice. "I guess I can be phonetic just as----"

"Anywheres is vulgar," interrupted Totts.

"Vulgar yourself!" screamed Cottsill, jumping up and down.

"Vulgar! Vulgar!" chimed in Maverick, whom the term bean talk had nettled.

But Totts had spied the list of Jesse Willows, and was pointing at it disdainfully. "And pray," said he, "what may a coat-house be?"

Now the handsome young man from Paw-paw was the last person to select for addressing in such a tone as Lysander Totts had taken.

"I beg yore pardon, suh?" he remarked, so politely that I became filled with apprehension.

Miss Appleby was gazing at him with all her eyes. "What do you think of him?" she whispered to me.

I suppose that indignation at his unwarrantable treatment of me in the car rendered me imprudent. "My dear Miss Appleby," I said to her, "my dear Gertrude, he is as beautiful as the day, as ignorant as a Socialist, and as dishonest as a plumber."

"How dare you speak of my husband so?" she replied. "We were married this morning. That's all we came for to your silly convention. Good-by." And rising, she swept out of the room.

But her exit was unobserved. The great West was still rattling on its blackboards, Maverick and Cottsill were scowling darkly at Totts. Totts was pointing one finger at coat-house, and Willows was smiling steadily at Totts, in a manner that now convinced me we were approaching the edge of something quite particular. Nor did even the bridegroom know that his bride had left us.

"I beg yore pardon, suh?" he repeated.

"Coat-house. What's that?" said Totts.

"It is whah they'd have you, suh, if they caught you teachin' any o' those railroad accidents o' yore's to the young."

"Yes, indeed; yes, indeed!" cried Maverick and Cottsill, eagerly.

Totts loudly blew his nose. "It shall remain court-house in the dictionary of scholars," he remarked.

Willows ran his eye up and down Totts' list, and then up and down Totts. "Schooling," he softly returned, "has done powerful little for the Amurrican who sails to Yurrup and puts surrup on his hot cakes."

"Yes, indeed; yes, indeed!" said Cottsill and Maverick again.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" pleaded Kibosh, "do not quarrel."

"Kwawrul, you mean," smiled Jesse Willows. "It's immawrul to kwawrul in Surracuse, Noo Yorruk."

Totts now began to show signs of jumping up and down.

"Have we adopted phonetic spelling, or have we not?" he roared.

"Not yore kind," said Willows.

"Yore!" echoed Totts. "Listen to that dialect!" And he blew his noise more loudly.

"Hup, hup," began Egghorn; but his voice stuck as usual.

"You should get a chauffeur," said Cottsill, severely, to him.

"Hup, hup. Compromise," finished Egghorn.

"Ah, yes, gentlemen, there we have it!" said Kibosh, earnestly. "Compromise is progress. Let us all accept one another. Thus the cause will profit."

His exhortation produced a brief, a very brief, lull. Each looked at the neighboring blackboards in silence; and Kibosh, doubtless with the idea of harmony, set the organ once more to playing, "My spelling 'tis of thee," while the rattling West continued to create a new language behind us.

At length Cottsill sighed. "Very well," he said, "for the sake of anywheres, I'll vote for surrup."

"That's wise, that's kind, that's good," said Kibosh; and he beat one hand gently on the table.

At this hopeful point, Jesse Willows noticed, for the first time, that no lady was now present, and his long body made a singular twisting and free motion beneath his clothes.

"I will vote for rud and anywheres," Totts said. "But I doubt if I can accept coat-house."

Jesse Willows took him instantly by the nose. "You'll accept nothin'," said he, with great sweetness; and he shook him forward and back. "I am weary of you and yore antics," and he shook him right and left. "You're goin' to rub out everything you have written," and he shook him round and round.

"Help," gurgled the struggling Totts. "Help!"

"No, indeed; no, indeed," cried Maverick and Cottsill, delighted.

"You gentlemen are included," said Willows to them, and they both hastily covered their noses with their hands. "I don't mean that way," he continued. "But you're goin' to rub yore lists out, too. Why, you're the contemptiblest of all the great American frauds. Just because you have written a picayune book on some picayune specialty, you pass for bein' educated in our half-civilized country. Put you among genuine scholars and you would look like old gum shoes. I know my accent is provincial," he paused and looked at Totts for a moment, "but it's a heap prettier'n yore's," he shook Totts round and round again, "and you and I are just goin' to let the English language take care of herself. She has done it for a thousand years, and she'll do it for a thousand more, changin' what she pleases an' keepin' what she pleases."

So saying, the young man, even as one drags a resisting dog by a chain, dragged the howling Totts by his nose to the blackboard, and forced the rubber into his hand; and as Totts hung back his firmly imprisoned organ received a still more acute sensation, whereat he leaped into the air, and erased his Surracuse list at one sweep. And next, since Cottsill and Maverick were hanging back also, one with his arms shielding grantha, while the other shielded anywheres, Totts was conducted to those words. "Out with grantha," commanded Jesse. "We'll keep it grandfather for a while yet, Mr. Bean Talk." They attempted to defend their lists, but vainly; and in the conflict that arose, a rubber flew crooked and hit one of the great West sharply in the back of the neck. He, being under a misapprehension, thereupon kicked his neighbor savagely, and in a moment all the profound scholars engaged together in a blind war, rubbing out one another's lists, whacking one another's heads, and often rolling by twos and threes beneath the table, from which dictionaries and inkstands were falling continuously. It was with the greatest difficulty that I got the gasoline organ between myself and harm's way. Jesse Willows had mounted upon the table with the still faintly bellowing Totts, whom he led slowly from one end to the other, amid the clouds of chalk and the general bedlam.

At the first pause which exhaustion brought, Masticator B. Fellows was perceived to be looking on quietly.

"Gentlemen," he said, "dear friends" (and these words stopped everything), "I am well pleased with what you have accomplished. I expected results, and I have got them. The surgeon awaits you in the House of Bandages."

No serious wounds were found; but also no scholar was found to be upon speaking terms with any other. By the generosity of Masticator each was sent home separately in a private car, on a special train, with plenty of chickle.

Masticator had created all the publicity that he desired. New students swarmed in armies to his University, and he presently issued a billion more shares of Chickle common. The press of the whole country rang with the enterprise.

SIMPLE SPELLERS WED

was one of the first headlines that greeted me upon my homeward journey. Yes; Jesse Willows and Gertrude Appleby were the exceptions; these two scholars had gone away in the same car together to their honeymoon, while I returned lonely to the index of my forthcoming volume.

Heigho!

End of Project Gutenberg's How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee, by Owen Wister