Chapter 19

The natural history of the racial or professional joke is easily written. At the outset it is crude and cruel, wholly at the expense of the group represented. In time the world wearies of an unequal contest, and we have a new order of jokes, in which the intended victim acquits himself well. This, too, gives way to a higher order, in which race, nationality or profession is employed merely as a cloak for common humanity. The successive stages mark the progress in assimilation, induced, in large measure, by laughter. There is no other social force so potent in creating mutual understanding and practical fraternity of spirit; in establishing the essential unity of mankind underneath its phenomenal diversity. Setting bounds to laughter: why, this is to indenture the angel of charity to the father of lies and the lord of hate.

_A Post Graduate School for Academic Donors_

At a recent meeting of an University Montessori Club the case of donors to colleges and universities was reported on by a special committee. The majority report drew a pretty heavy indictment. It was shown that the givers to colleges and universities seldom considered the real needs of their beneficiaries. Donors liked to give expensive buildings without endowment for upkeep, liked to give vast athletic fields, rejoiced in stadiums, affected memorial statuary and stained glass windows, dabbled in landscape gardening, but seldom were known either to give anything unconditionally or, specifically, to destine a gift for such uninspiring needs as more books or professors' pay. The result of giving without first considering the needs of the benefited college or university, was that every gift made the beneficiary more lopsided. Certain universities were almost capsized by their incidental architecture. Others were subsidizing graduate students to whom the conditions of successful research were denied. Still others were calling great specialists to the teaching force without providing the apparatus for the pursuit of these specialties. Others preferred to offer financial aid to students who were poor--in every sense. Donors apparently without exception had single-track minds. They saw plainly enough what they wanted to give, but never took the pains to see the donation in its relation to the institution as a whole. The majority report, which was drawn by our famous Latinist, Professor Claudius Senex, concluded with the despairing note _Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_. The minority report was delivered orally by young Simpson Smith of the department of banking and finance. He "allowed" that everything alleged by the majority report was true, but saw no use in dwelling on such truths, since donors always had done and always would do just as they darned pleased.

The Club took a more hopeful view of the case, and it was voted that our Club should resolve itself into the trustees and faculty of a Post Graduate School for Academic Donors. Our committee recommended that we qualify our advanced students by conferring the lower degree of Heedless Donor (H.D.) every year upon all givers who can be shown to have given at random. No method of instruction seemed more appropriate than the seminar plan of practical exercises based on concrete instances. The first laboratory experiment was performed in the presence of a Seminar of seven H.D.'s. in a specially called meeting of married professors attired only in bath gowns borrowed from the crews and base ball teams. Into this assembly the class of H.D.'s was suddenly introduced. They naturally inquired into the meaning of the spectacle, and were informed that in no case did the mere salary of these professors enable them to wear clothes at all. "But you do usually wear clothes?" inquired a student of a favorite professor. "How do you get them?" "By University extension lecturing at ten dollars a lecture" was the quiet answer. Another professor explained that he got his clothes by tutoring dull students, another by book reviewing. One somewhat shamefacedly said the clothes came from his wife's money. One declined to answer, and, as a matter of fact, his clothes are habitually first worn by a more fortunate elder brother.

On the whole the results of our first seminary exercise were satisfactory. One student immediately drew a considerable check for the salary fund, another, who had been planning to give a hockey rink, said he would think things over. Still a third deposited forty pairs of slightly worn trousers with the university treasurer, "for whom it might concern." Only one accepted the demonstration contentedly. He admitted that low pay and extra work were hard on the Professors, but he also felt that these outside activities advertised the university and were good business. Of course you wore out some professors in the process, but you could always get others.

Our second seminary exercise was of a less spectacular sort. The post graduate donors were each provided with a bibliography. This in every instance contained the titles of books that a particular professor or graduate student in the university would need to consult for his studies of the ensuing week. It was briefly explained by Professor Senex that original research could not be successfully accomplished without reference to all the original sources and to the writings of other scholars. The bibliographies ran from ten titles or so to nearly a hundred, according to the nature of the particular research involved. The exercise consisted in going to the university library and matching these titles of desiderata with the books actually in the catalogue. After varying intervals, the post graduate donors returned with their report. Nobody had found more than half the books sought for: many had found less.

The effect of this demonstration was interesting. The donor who had tended towards the hockey rink, instead transferred his $100,000 to the book purchase fund. He said he guessed the old place needed real books more than it needed artificial ice. Others followed his example according to their ability.

The student who was satisfied with our bath robe faculty meeting, came back from the library equally pleased. He had not compared his bibliography with the catalogue, but a brief general inspection had convinced him that there were already more books in the library than anybody could read. His intention held firm to give his Alma Mater a tower higher than any university tower on record and containing a chime of bells that periodically played the college song. The tower was naturally to bear his name, which was also his dear mother's.

_A Suggestion Regarding Vacations_

Why wouldn't it be well for the country colleges to shorten their summer vacations, and lengthen their winter ones? Then urban students would not, for so long a period in summer, be put to their trumps to find out what to do with themselves; and, what is more important, in winter both faculty and students would have increased opportunity for metropolitan experience. In the summer vacations, the cities are empty of music, drama, and most else of what makes them distinctively worth while. Intellectually, the country needs the city at least as much as, morally, the city needs the country.

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_Simplified Spelling_

After receiving, in answer to the invitation in our first number, a few bitter objections to simplified spelling, we have felt like apologizing each time we approached the subject. Perhaps the best apology we can make is that apparently the majority of our readers are interested in it. Therefore we hope that the others will tolerate as equably as they can, the devotion of a little space to it in the interest of the majority. Perhaps the objectors may ultimately be able to settle the difficulty as we and our house have settled another unconquerable nuisance--the dandelions on our lawns--: we have concluded to like them.

Our recent correspondence regarding Simplified Spelling has developed a few points which we submit to those who abominate it, those who favor it, and those who, like the eminent school-superintendent we have already quoted, and like ourselves for that matter, do both:

To a leading Professor of Greek:

I am more hopeful than you that the repetition of a consonant beginning the second syllable of a dissyllable, to close the preceding syllable, as in "differ", "fiddle", "gobble", etc., _wil_ "be generally accepted", especially in view of the fact that it is _alreddy_ "generally accepted", and needs only to be extended to a minority of words.

"Annutther" is not "a fair illustration". On the contrary, it is an exception that I probably was very injudicious to call any attention to; and the trouble with you scholars, I find all the way thru, is that you permit those little exceptions to influence you too much. If a good simplification is ever effected, it will be by cutting Gordian knots, and you all of you seem absolutely incapable of anything of the kind. I don't expect anyhow to make much out of a man who will spell "peepl" "peopl". Imagine all this said with a grin, not a frown!!

You wil never get back to "the old sounds" of the vowels, in God's world.

As to the long sounds, I am going in for all I am worth on the double vowels. I alreddy agree with the English Society on "faather", "feel" and "scuul", and am going to do all I can for _niit_, and for spredding the _oo_ in _floor_ and _door_ into _snore_, _more_, _hole_, _poke_, etc. "Awl", "cow" and "go" are spelt wel, and their spelling shoud be spred. These seem to be the lines of least resistance. I find that they work first-rate in my own riting.

You make enuf serious objections to diacritical marks, but my serious objection to them is that they ar obstacles to lerners, especially forreners.

From his answer:

All right; I catch the grin, and cheerfully grin back. The business of a scholar (Emerson's "man thinking", Plato's [Greek: philosophos]) is to take as long views as he can; in this case, to look far beyond the possibilities of my life-time. The more you people with the shorter views, as I venture to think them, agitate for and practise each little partial solution, the more you help on the threshing out which must go on for many years before we can arrive at any general solution. So, more power to your elbow!

Meantime my own spelling will continue to be--like the conventional spelling of the printers of today--a hodge-podge of inconsistencies, quite indefensible on rational grounds, and varying with circumstances. Of course the rational way to spell _people_ is _piipl_, or _pipl_.

Which we think is an attempt to bolster up a lost cause.

From another reader:

Your closing sentence in the first number of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW states with a most distressing combination of vowels and outlandish collocation of consonants that you would like to hear from your readers on the subject.... Z is not a pretty letter, and to see it so frequently usurping the place so long held by s is far from gratifying to the eye....

Suppose you establish to your own satisfaction a method for assigning sound values; how will you reach the differences in vowel sounds that prevail in the United States? The New Englander's mouthing of _a_ differs from that of the Northern New Yorker, and both differ greatly from that of the Southerner--indeed, in the different Southern States there is variation.... At first I was interested in simplified spelling, but the eccentricities developed by its advocates alienated me long since, so I beg of you, drop it.

From our answer:

I delayed thanking you for your letter of the 29th until there should be time for you to see the April-June number.

I hope you are feeling better now.

If you are not, I do not think I can do much to console you, because when a man has been irritated into that position where the alleged beauty of a letter counts in so serious a question, he is probably beyond mortal help.

I have no desire "to reach the differences in vowel sounds that prevail in the United States". There is not much difference among cultivated people. Probably a fair standard would be the conversation at the Century Club, where there are visitors from Maine to California, and hardly any noticeable difference in pronunciation.

There seems to be no disagreement among authorities that a simplified spelling would save a great deal of time among children....

Of course I have not been able to answer most of the letters I have received on the subject. I single yours out because you have had a fall from grace, and I feel guilty of having had something to do with it, by presenting stronger meat than was necessary, in our January number. I have fought on the Executive Committee of the Spelling Board against publishing anything of the English S.S.S.'s proposed improvements, for fear of arousing such prejudice as yours; and yet in our first number, I was insensibly led into, myself, publishing things that looked just as outlandish.

As I said at the outset, I hope you feel better since seeing the April-June number, and should be glad to know how you do feel.

From his reply:

Thank you very much for the courtesy of your letter of 9th April. I was surprised to receive it, as I did not suppose that your multifarious duties would permit you to notice my rather feeble protest. I was somewhat amused that you should think my irritation so extreme as to call for an effort to console me. I am sure I appreciate your attempt to do so. But really, I was not so hard hit as you thought, because I do not expect in my day (I am no longer a young man) to see the champions of "simplified spelling" (some of it seems to me the reverse of "simplified") gain such headway as to materially mar my pleasure in the printed page, for I do not believe you will allow the atrocities of the last few pages of your first number to creep into the delightful essays which render THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW such pleasant and profitable reading....

I do not think any great respect is due the opinion of those who think that a simplified spelling would save a great deal of time among children, for it also seems to have its rules which will present as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of our present system....

Why _thru_? U does not always have the sound of double _o_--very rarely in fact. Why not _throo_--if the aim is to make the written sign correspond to the sound. Thru suggests _huh_.

From our answer:

Regarding "thru", you justly say that _u_ does not always have the sound of _oo_. The only sound of _oo_ worthy of respect, with which I have an acquaintance, is in "door" and "floor". The idea of using it to represent a _u_ sound is perhaps the culminating absurdity of our spelling.

Your statement that simplified spelling "seems to have its rules which will present as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of our present system" overlooks the advantage that writing with a phonetic alphabet, like those of Europe, has over writing with purely conventional characters, as in China. Now English writing is probably the least phonetic in Europe. Simplifying it in any of the well-known proposed methods would be making it more phonetic, and consequently easier. At present it is a mass of contradictions, and the rules that can be extracted from it are overburdened with exceptions. Simplification will decrease both the exceptions and the rules themselves. There are now several ways of representing each of many sounds, and therefore several "rules" to be learned for each of such sounds. Simplification will tend to reduce those rules to one for each sound, and so far as it succeeds, will _not_ "present as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of our present system."

All the degrees of reformed spelling now in use are professedly but transitional. They may gradually advance into a respectable degree of consistency, but we expect that to be reached quicker by a coherent survival among the warring elements proposed by the S.S.S., the S.S.B. and the better individual reformers. Probably there is already more agreement than disagreement among these elements.

While the others are fighting it out, the various transition styles will do something to prepare parents to accept a more nearly perfect style for their children, and perhaps take an interest in seeing the various counsels of perfection fight each other.

A few words have already found their way into advertisements--_tho_, _thru_, _thoro_ (a damnable way of spelling _thurro_), and the shortened terminal _gram(me)s_, _og(ue)s_ and _et(te)s_; and these and a few more have found their way into correspondence on commonplace subjects; and the interest in the topic, especially among educators, is spreading. But most of the inconsistencies will probably bother and delay children and forreners until they are given something with some approach to consistency.

* * * * *

After we fight to something like agreement on a system, how are we to get it going?

It does not seem extravagant to expect that as soon as the weight of scholarly opinion endorses a vocabulary from our present alphabet consistent enough to afford a base for a reasonable spelling book, spelling books and readers will be prepared for the schools, and adopted by advanced teachers. Many are clamoring for such now. When the youngsters have mastered these, which they will do in a small fraction of the time wasted on their present books, they will of their own accord pick up without troubling their teachers a knowledge of the present forms. This they have always done when their teaching has been by the various phonetic methods with special letters, and have done both in much less time than they have needed for learning in the ordinary way. But they will prefer the reasonable forms, and this demand the publishers will probably not be slow to supply.