| Show TOE LITTLE BOY CHRISTMAS PUDDING BY UNO HOO christmas has come again the brightest happiest day in all the year what gorgeous visions of brilliant windows magnificent christmas tree jingling sleigh bells and full stockings it conjures up but perhaps the richest of all ais riches is the plum pudding it is ilnia full of good in some it resembles the english language i e it id too rich for the small boy bat the little boy rejoices in it and I 1 am glad for him yet he eats toe much of it and I 1 am sorry tor him tue little boy has a double load to carry a load of pudding that produces bad spells and a lead of language that gives him bad spells he soon recovers from the bad spells of the pudding but he never recovers from the bad spells of the language therefore I 1 am sorry for the small boy and for his sisters and bis cousins and his aunts also for the many millions of other small boys that suffer in the same way from the same cause the boys who have to spend all kneir lives in learning to spell ad who go down to their graves year after year without learning and I 1 am glad when christmas comes to the little boy for it gives him a rest and a chance to clear bis bhain from the cobwebs and the insane contradictions of the spelling book the little boy is simpleminded simple minded he thinks when he learns the alphabet that it will give ahlm a key to the spelling but be is mistaken he does not amow that the alphabet is a fraud and that the sounds vary as those of a harp of a thousand thou yand strings lie does cot know that dough d o u g h spells do and that c o u g h spells coff and that p 1 e u g h spells plow and that p h t h i s i c spells but if he is diligent in study for a few years be will find it out and also discover how useless the alphabet is as a key to spelling but it is sot bis fault it is the fault of the wise men in the east who have placed this burden upon him and upon his generation atter him forever bor do they not say ours is a rich language and its vocabulary is large and increasing year by year both by incorporation frona other languages and by thae manufacture of bew words such as usufruct and and many other potent and wonderful words and have we not already one hundred and fourteen thousand words in our old lexicon and many more in the new and do we not spell fifteen thousand of them in two different ways I 1 and if we were to change our spelling in the least would it not destroy all our literature for must we not go to the roots so that we may know what I 1 be word has been in the past 1 and is not our language like a beautiful tree with its roots firmly Im bedded m the soil and its luxuriant branches spreading out on every side and loaded down with fruit and would it not be e sacrilege to disturb aitor cut it down but unless it is a cherry tree the little boy dont want to cut it down but he might b a fittje and the little boy wonders why they take so lauy words from other languages and why they dont change tins fc when they do so that thes will qt the alphabet or else laange ane alpha betto fit the in the word cadion ca fion and he wonders why more people the example of those editors in the east who are dropping oui some of the silent letters and making other slight changes for the better and be wonders if the language ever has in the last years and the old books are lost on account of it and if the big dictionary keeps growing bigger if it will not fall on abe wise men some day and crush them and if it would tie a bad thing for the small boys if it should and he remembers the story of the man who saw sambo in prison and asked him what be was in tor and he said he was in for borrowing bouey but the man said they dont put peo pie in prison for borrowing and then sambo said but I 1 had to hit the man on the bead several times before he would lend it and the little boy wonders if this course will necessary in the case of the wise men in the east before the will relinquish seme of their long words and he wonders why abe wise men should go to the roots tor the apples instead of picking them off the branches and if change is wrong why they are changing the bible and why the spelling book is so much more sacred anan the bible and he gels so drowsy thinking it over that be falls asleep and he has eaten so ranch pudding that he dreams about bis grandmother and thia is why I 1 ana glad that christmas has come |
