The Whispering Gallery, Part IV [pp. 468-471]

470 OVERLAND MONTllLY
"This time I shall give you the answer you expect," said Miss Ravaline. "But do
you mean to say you are not shocked when you receive a badly spelled letter?"
"Not nearly so much as by an illegible one," said he. "The bad spelling merely
shows me at what point my corresponJent's memory is defective. Everybody's memory is
defective at one point or another. But when I receive an illegible letter, this sentiment
stands out with perfect legibility:`Your time, Mr. Elacott, is of no value, whereas mine
is worth a great many dollars a second; and I do not care to take a little pains to save
you annoyance.' To write legibly is a purely mechanical task, and not to do it is inexcusable; but with defective spelling, if it is not bad enough to obscure the meaning, I no
more think of finding fault than with my friend's unsymmetrical nose or imperfectly
colored eyes."
"That may hold good as to spelling," said I;" but is it not singular that many who
hear correct pronunciation every day never learn it? One would think they could not
help catching it involuntarily."
"I used to think so," said Elacott; "but I suppose they do not observe the difference,
- just as a foreigner is not conscious of his peculiar accent when he uses our language.
It always amuses me to see a person carefully looking up spellings in the dictionary, and
inquiring which is the, best usage as between two pronunciations, when either is perfectly
good, or when a wrong one conveys the meaning correctly, and then to note that
same person unconsciously arranging the carefully spelled and pronounced words in such
order in his sentence that they may convey either of two or three meanings; and again
to observe that he takes a hundred words to say what were said better in twenty. Somebody ought to tell him that, instead of troubling himself about the immaterial difference
between naytional and na~hional, he would do better to study how to purge his speech
of such vulgarities as`later on,' and`higher up,'~and`lower down,' and`preach a sermon,
and`get married.'
"I am not so much annoyed by superfluity of words," said Miss Ravaline, "as by
scarcity of pauses. To me, the most disagreeable talker is the one whose words flow on
and on, in a continuous stream, while the listener feels like llorace's simpleton, who sat
on the river bank and waited for the water to flow by, that he might pass over dry shod.
I always imagine such a talker saying internally,`You cannot by any possibility have
anything to say on this subject that would be worth hearing; and I will save you embarrassment by not making a pause that might seem to call upon you to contribute an idea
to the conversation.' But I am amused at the self-satire of that kind of talker, who is
unconscious that the best discourse is suggestive and arouses thought in the listeners and
enables them to say something, and who apparently assumes that his talk has no power to
do anything of the kind."
"Yes," said Elacott, "and such a person is very apt to be one of your eyethe'r and
nyther talkers, who imagine they have studied out all the niceties of pronunciation, when
in fact they have got at least half of them wrong as is commonly the case with those
two words."
"Nevertheless," said Miss Ravaline, "I have always been thankful that, by some
good fortune, I am a fairly good speller; and I shall not cease trying to pronounce
correctly."
"Of course," said Elacott, "I suppose any lady would feel somewhat uncomfortable
if she knew that her costume was out of fashion, and yet she would not admit for a
moment that clothes make the woman. But the nicest point in orthography and orthoepy