Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1875 — Spellomania. [ARTICLE]

Spellomania.

Now don’t go looking in the dictionary for that word. You will not find it there. It is the name of a new disease which has broken out this spring with great violence all over the country. We call the disease new, still there are traditions handed down of its appearance here and there in old times, but those attacks were slight compared to the malignant form which it has taken in these days. And everybody has it. It is not, like measles and whooping-cough, confined principally to children, but it attacks all persons of whatever age and degree. And, as in other contagious diseases, it is noticed that as a general thing the older a person is the worse he has it. The disease manifests itself in different ways with different sufferers, but there is one thing in which they are all alike, and that is their devotion to the dictionary and spelling-book. Morning, noon and night they will be found bending over Webster’s Unabridged. They carry it about with them from room to room, and have it within reach at meal-time, work-time and play-time. When they go into the street they exchange it for a spelling-book, and waik along poring over the precious volume as if it contained the quintessence of all wisdom. The very air is thick with flying words; they rain down upon you and dodge them you can’t Every family resolves itself into an evening spelling-school; and little children who scarcely know their letters "by sight go about spelling words of five syllables that they have caught from their elders. Oh, if Noah Webster could but have lived to see this day! When friends meet, the common salutation is not “ How do you do ?” but “ What word did you get down on last night?” If you go into a neighbor’s of a morning errand, no sooner do you step inside than you are transfixed with a word to spell. You run against an acquaintance at the street corner, and are brought up with the imperious challenge, “ Spell syzygy!” You go to make a ceremonious call, and arc scarcely seated before your hostess polite'y asks you to spell “sisalgrass.” You are invited to spend a social evening at a friend’s house, and the “ feast of reason” consists of a course in Sanders’ Speller, with a dessert of Webster’s Dictionary. Gentlemen go down to their business in the street-cars, propounding to each other as they go such conundrums as these: “If ‘indelible’ is spelled i-n-d-e-l-i----b-l-e, why should ‘deleble’ be spelled d-e-l-e-b-l-e?” “If j-e-l-l-y spells ‘jelly,’ why should g-e-l-a-b-I-e spell ‘gelable’?” ' “If ‘opaline’ has only one l, why should ‘crystalline’ be allowed Avo?” “ What is the use of the p and two A’* in phthisic?” “Spell caoutchouc!” etc., and the usual answer is “ Give it up.” Business men usually give in to the malady as soon as anybody, and the type of the disease seems a little more malignant with them than with anybody else?For instance, you drop into an office to ask the loan of a few dollars, and are told, “ I am s-o-r sor r-y rv, sorry, but ! cannot a-c ac c-o-m com o-a-a, no, m-o mo accommo d-a-t-e you with the 1-o-n-e, no, i-o-a-n, loan to-day.” Even our editorial sanctum does not escape the contagion; and as the anxigus and trembling author receives back his manuscript from the editorial hands accompanied with the remark, “ Your poem is very good; it has the true poetic fire; the budding flowers and purling streams and soft breezes are all there and all right; but then you have spelled ‘ traveler’ with two is and transposed the vow-els in ‘ reprieve’; therefore we must respectfully decline itj” he departs a wiser if a sadder man. But all these are only preliminaries to the grand crisis, w-hich always manifests itself at the spelling-match. It is pitiful to see the long rows of strong and healthy - looking people stricken down by a worn. Too exhausted to stand, they drop, one after another, like leaves in an autumn gale, while the sympathizing friends who look on are powerless to help. But there is some light in the prospect. As there are some acute attacks of illness that leave the system better and stronger by expelling the cause of the disease, so we are not without hepe that Oils bad spell may cast fout some of the very " peculiar and original orthography which has long debilitated the entire public system. If such shall be the result no one will rejoice in it quite so much as we long-suffering editors. And aftei that we shall pray for a similar epidemic of punctuation.—Advance. \ f