Show LO ok 9 r go up WPM 0 al Z IN r by ELMO SCOTT WATSON F WHILE youre reading you cone come across a word the EF meaning of which you do not know what do you do the chances eire are that you 4 P ask somebody to tell you what it means and the chances are arc also that that somebody will tell you to look it up tn in the big book or to Ocon consult sult mr webster for that la 19 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 waa just one hundred years ago this summer that a scene ot of unusual activity was taking place in the print shop of hezekiah Heze klah howe elowe in new haven conn and just one hundred years ago this autumn there came forth the first edition ot of noah koah websters american americ an dictionary of the english language now kow the issuing of a dictionary Is not in itself a unique event but the issuing of noah koah websters dictionary away back baek there in 1823 was a noteworthy event and in some respects the book itself was unique heretofore the english speaking world had depended upon dr samuel johnsons for authoritative spelling and definition of words but when the edition of 2500 copies of the new dictionary tio nary each consisting of two bulky quarto volumes of more than 1000 pages each appeared doctor johnsons sons work was already obsolete for websters book listed defined and illustrated lust lustra rated fed with appropriate quotations som somewhere ethere between and words and included words and nearly definitions which bad never before appeared in any dictionary of the english tongue most of the definitions webster bad coined new anew doing virtually all of both the mental and manual labor involved unassisted ile he also did some revising end simplifying and it Is to him that we owe the fact that we write it honor instead of honour and traveler instead of traveller but more than that his big dictionary was almost an encyclopedia in which he be set a standard etan dard tor for accuracy and completeness of definition which governs the lexicographers art of this date in tact fact nearly all of the later dictionaries have been based upon websters work and have preserved hi hise identical words in a large number of their nit notions ions from that little edition of 0 aw 2500 copies issued in 1828 have hare grown the millions of dictionaries which are to be found la in the homes schools and offices of the english speaking world of 0 today and every one ot of these dictionaries di tion aries whether it bears his name on its cover or not Is a monument to noah webster the yankee schoolteacher and lawyer who devoted for ty eight years of bis big life to a task which has enriched our language immeasurably although the worda webster and dictionary are synonymous 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 to too much to say perhaps that the contribution trib ution of noah webster to american life III 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 coon conn who in 1774 when noah jr r was sixteen years old mortgaged his farm to pay his sons expenses in yale college from which the boy was graduated four years later upon the day of his big graduation his father gave him an eight dollar continental bill worth about tour four dollars dollare at the time lind end told him that lie he could do DO more for him although young webster had intended to become a lawyer lie he bad no means to continue his studies inta that field so BO lie had to resort to teaching to make a living while he studied law by himself so successfully it proved that he was admitted to the bar in hartford in 1781 he was un no able to wait for a practice however so lie he again engaged in school teaching this time at goshen N T Y where he be established a classical school there in 1782 foreseeing that amer lea after separation from the mother country would need to have its own school texts teits he planned a grammatical institute to include a speller a reader and a grammar the speller was issued first in 1783 followed to in 1784 by the grammar and in n 1785 by the reader the success of the now dow famous blueback speller still familiar to the older generation of americans of today was In instantaneous and must have been amazing to the young schoolmaster in preparing it at ho he had shown the sanie mime eklin and sound bound sense which cl his hl dictionary later it was arranged in a more logical and serviceable manner mander than Dil speller the work of an englishman previously used and instead of dry pac passages sages from the scriptures he used interesting if homely anecdotes which appealed immediately med lately to the children who for the next nest hundred years were to be impressed by the moral of these E stories by 1813 the sales of the speller were averaging copies a year by IS 1823 3 they had bad risen to copies annually and by 1849 they were up to a year As late as 1880 it was still going E trong and it has been estimated that more than copies have been told sold since 1783 websters fame may rest mainly upon his bis dictionary but in a sense the dictionary owes its existence to the speller for or during the remainder of websters life and especially the twenty years he spent in compiling compall ng the dictionary most of the support of his 1119 family came from the profits of this little blue backed 15 penny book in 1800 he gave up all his other work to devote decote 1111 himself Self to his dictionary ills original plan ivas was to correct the errors and supply the omissions in older dictionaries especially johnsons so he spent a number of years collecting words then realizing his bis own lack of knowledge as to the origin of words he changed his plan for the next ten years lie he demoted himself to a comparative study of words and when he was sixty six years old having exhausted all the resources of libraries in this country he went to france and england to complete his work finally his hie 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 on one e exacting task the sturdy old yankee set about revising some of hla his earlier works in 1840 he be published a revised edition of his big dictionary an and 1 I he was in the midst of a second re vibon in 1843 when death c came time to claim him so the next time you come across a word whose meaning you do not understand der stand before you ask somebody what it means thinie of the admonition of one chronicler of webster 0 career if there Is one too lazy to arke the halt half dozen steps necessary necess rry to reach the dictionary let him ile i le ture the connecticut scholar ing twenty five sears pacing about ha h fore his huge semicircular table nde index with dictionaries of all languages iron arabic to icelandic so that he alg might gb give his big great work to the world |