Curiosities of Orthography.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 180, 22 April 1873, Page 7

Curiosities of Orthography.

A writer in the Cincinnati Times and Chronicle remarks that some of the spelling that an editor has to encounter is enough to harrow up his soul, and freeze the marrow in his bones. It means work with him, and in that light the fun of the thing disappears. Think of bis horror when he sees “anxious” spelled “ankshouse” by some complacent blunderer—such a one, for instance, as can never distinguish between tion, cion, and sion ; cannot see why “ fiery” should not be “Urey,” or imagine why the second syllable of “necessary” should be spelled with a c, and the third with an s. Occasionally cases of bad spelling crop out among the professions, and some lamentable instances of weakness in this respect (cine to light among the “ humanitarians.” For instance, a young lawyer in an interior city one early morning locked his office door, and left upon it this mysterious legend ; “ Gone to brexfus.” In a small New England town a druggist was surprised and disturbed to receive at the hands of a dirty looking customer the following prescription “ Pleas give the bare something to fizick him 15cts worth.” During the war a letter written by a rebel soldier to his sweetheart was wherein the writer said “We will lick the yanks two-morrer if gocldlemity spares our lives.” Ilufns Chaote, or somebody else, said that the ways of Providence and the decision of a petit jury are past accounting for. We may safely say the same of the spelling of the latter, since a Pittsburg jury handed into the judge a communication endorsed, “To the ononible gug.” The proprietor of a country store once worked himself nearly into a brain fever endeavouring to make intelligible the following note, given to him by a small boy, the son of one of Ids customers “ mister Cream “ V\ unt you let my hoay liev a pare of Easy toad shuz 1” However, he was not more horrified than the schoolmaster who received a letter from a man who wrote ;—“ 1 have desided to inter my hoy in your scull.” The letter which some person wrote to an editor, when discontinuing his paper, contains internal evidence of the truth of its assertions : “I think folks otfent to spend their muniiy for pay per. My dad diddent and ovary buddy sod he was the intelligentes man in the country and had the smartest family of boize that ever Jugged tutors. ” I las house for sail,” was the announcement a traveller saw nailed over the door of a humble dwelling in New Hampshire. He called file proprietor to the door and gravely inquired, “ When is your house going to sail ?” “When some feller comes along who can raise the wind, responded the lean, with a sly twinkle in his eye, and the traveller moved mournfully on.