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Show 1 By ELMO SCOTT WATSON EF, WHILE you're reading, you come across a word, the meaning of which you do not know, what do you do? The chances are that you & ask somebody to tell you mL what it means, and the chances are, also, that that Pvi somebody will tell you to ' "look 'it up in the big book" 'ii i or to "consult Mr. Webster." For that is what Americans have been doing now for exactly a hundred years "looking It up In the big book" or 'consulting Mr. Webster." For It was Just one hundred years ago this summer sum-mer that a scene of unusual activity was tnking place In the print shop of Uezekiah Howe In New Haven, Conn., and Just one hundred years ago this autumn there came forth the Brat edition of Noah Webster's "American Dictionary of the English Language." Now, the issuing of a dictionary is not In itself a unique event, but the Issuing of Noah Webster's dictionary away back there in 1S2S was a noteworthy note-worthy event, and in some respects the book itself was unique. Heretofore Hereto-fore the English-speaking world had depended upon Dr. Samuel Johnson's lor authoritative spelling and defl-nl'.ion defl-nl'.ion of words. But when the edition ed-ition of 2,500 copies of the new dictionary, dic-tionary, each consisting of two bulky quarto volumes of more than 1,000 pages each, appeared, Doctor Johnson's John-son's work was already obsolete. For Webster's book listed, defined and illustrated il-lustrated with appropriate quotations somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000 words and Included 12,000 words and nearly -10.000 definitions which had never before appeared in any dictionary diction-ary of the English tongue. Most of the definitions Webster had coined anew, doing virtually all of both the mental and manual labor involved unassisted. un-assisted. He also did some revising and simplifying, and it Is to him that we owe the fact that we write It "honor" Instead of "honour" and "traveler" "trav-eler" Instead of "traveller." But more than that, his dictionary was almost an encyclopedia In which be set a standard for accuracy and completeness complete-ness of definition which governs the lexicographer's art of this date. In fact, nearly all of the later dictionaries diction-aries have been based upon Webster's work and have preserved his Identical words in a large number of their definitions. From that little edition of 2,500 copies Issued In 1S28 have grown the millions of dictionaries which are to be found In the homes, schools and offices of the English-speaking world of today, and every one of these dictionaries dic-tionaries whether It bears his name on its cover or not Is a monument to Noah Webster, the Yankee schoolteacher school-teacher and lawyer, who devoted forty-eight years of his life to a task which has enriched our language Immeasurably. Im-measurably. Although the words "Webster" and "dictionary" are synonymous syn-onymous in the minds of most of us, but few of us know much about the man, Noah Webster. Nine out of ten perhaps would confuse him with his distant relative, Daniel Webster, the orator and statesman. Yet it Is not too much to say perhaps, that the contribution con-tribution of Noah Webster to American Ameri-can life will be an important one long after that of Daniel Webster will have been forgotten entirely. Noah Webster was the son of a poor New England farmer of West Hartford. Hart-ford. Conn., who in 1774, when Noah, Jr., was sixteen years old, mortgaged his farm to pay his son's expenses in Yale college from which the boy was graduated four years later. Upon the day of his graduation his father gave him an eight-dollar Continental bill (worth about four dollars at the time) and told him that he could do no more for him. Although young Webster had intended to become a lawyer, he had no means to continue his studies Into that field, so he had to resort to teaching teach-ing to make a living while he studied law by himself so successfully, It proved, that he was admitted to the bar in Hartford In 17S1. He was unable un-able to wait for a practice, however, so he again engaged In school teaching, teach-ing, this time at Goshen, N. Y., where he established a classical school. There In 1782, foreseeing that America, Amer-ica, after separation from the mother country would need to have its own school texts, he planned a "Grammatical "Grammat-ical Institute" to Include a speller, a reader and a grammar. The speller was issued first, in 1783, followed In 17S4 by the grammar, and In 1785 by the reader. The success of the now-famous now-famous "blue back speller," still familiar fa-miliar to the older generation of Americans of today, was Instantaneous Instantane-ous and must have been amazing to the young schoolmaster. In preparing prepar-ing U, he had shown the s.-mie skill and sound sense which el- ..cterized his dictionary later. It was arranged in a more logical and serviceable manner man-ner than Dilworth's speller, the work of an Englishman previously used, and instead of dry passages from the Scriptures, he used interesting, If homely, anecdotes which appealed Immediately Im-mediately to the children who for the next hundred years were to be Impressed Im-pressed by the moral of these stories. By 1815 the sales of the speller were averaging 2S6.000 copies a year. By 1828' they had risen to 350,000 copies annually, and by 184S they were up to 1,000,000 a year. As late as 18S0 it was still going strong, and it has been estimated that more than 100,-000,000 100,-000,000 copies have been sold since 17S3. Webster's fame may rest mainly upon his dictionary, but in a sense the dictionary owes its existence to the speller, for during the remainder of Webster's life, and especially the twenty years he spent in compiling the dictionary, most of the support of his family came from the profits of this little blue-backed lo-penny book. In 1800 he gave up all his other work to devote himself to his dictionary. His original plan was to correct the errors and supply the omissions in older old-er dictionaries, especially Johnson's. So he spent a number of years collecting col-lecting words. Then realizing his own lack of knowledge as to the origin of words he changed his plan. For the next ten years he devoted himself to a comparative study of words, and when he was sixty-six years old, having exhausted ex-hausted all the resources of libraries in this country, he went to France and England to complete his work. . Finally his great task was done, and In the autumn of 1828, It came from the press. Not content to rest after a quarter-century of Incessant labor on one exacting task, the sturdy old Yankee set about revising some of his earlier works. In 1840 he published a revised edition of his dictionary and he was In the midst of a second revision re-vision in 1843 when death came to claim him. So the next time you come across a word whose meaning you do not understand, un-derstand, before you ask somebody what It means, think of the admonition admoni-tion of one chronicler of Webster't career "If there Is one too lazy to take the half-dozen steps necessary to reach the dictionary, let him r.lc-ture r.lc-ture the Connecticut scholar spending spend-ing twenty-five years pacing about h fore his huge semicircular table, laden with dictionaries of all languages fror Arabic to Icelandic, so that he might give his great work to the world," |