I strove, but unsuccessfully, to occupy a seat beside her at table; it was Jesse Willows who got it, the other being taken by Egghorn, while Totts placed himself opposite. Napoleon preferred men with great noses, but that of Totts would have pleased him too well, I think; and Totts blew it continually. It was my hope that supper, or dinner, or whatever they called the next meal, would not be served with the distressing rapidity of this one; one had barely the time to swallow, and the food went whole down one's throat; but the next meal, and all meals, were the same, and, had our convention lasted longer than it did, I should have fallen victim to a grave dyspepsia. This, I learned, was another instance of the vast genius of Masticator B. Fellows: while educating his students, he created in them the need for the product of his own monopoly. He gave them no time to chew at their meals, and chickle was served free in all the houses. For chewing, at some time or other, is necessary to digestion, and among the thousands at Chickle University I saw not one anywhere, boy or girl, whose mouth was not going like a slow rabbit's; and to judge from the universal oscillatory motion of the jaws of the American people in trains and all public places, I see they are learning that great economic principle of Masticator's, which is announced everywhere in the street cars:—

nickles being the simple spelling of nickels.

This great man allowed us at length to see him next morning, when we assembled to begin our work. We sat round an imposing table some twenty strong—for all the profound scholars were now arrived—and in front of each scholar, on the ample green baize table-cover, was a great dictionary, with a great glass inkstand and writing materials. Tall blackboards stood behind us, waiting to receive the words we should reform; but the best of it was to find myself sitting next Miss Appleby, with Willows quite an agreeable distance away. Kibosh had arranged all our seats, and it is the best thing I know of him.

When Masticator B. Fellows entered to open our convention, it was plain at once whence Kibosh had acquired his manner and his appearance—so far as he could acquire this latter: the secretary might have been an early, bad photograph of the magnate. To see Masticator, he was the creature of brotherly love, the preacher of benign gospels, the teacher of female academies; no smell of Senate or Syndicate hung about him. Bald, with a silken skull-cap, bland, with his ten pointed fingers meeting as if to bless, with a sunrise smile, and a black coat as long and unlovely as conscious virtue, he stood before us in benevolent silence, and we rose as one scholar. But at once he motioned us to sit down.

"I think there's a dollar-sign in his jaw," whispered Miss Appleby to me.

Already Masticator was addressing us, slowly and softly.

"Dear friends," he said, "be welcome. I am worth two hundred and forty-five millions. Thank God that you are not. Thank God that you are poor. Thank God for your scanty meals and clothing, and your ceaseless failure to make both ends meet. Pray God you may die poor. How I envy you all your blessed privilege of struggle! Thank God, and now to business.

"Everything is getting better. Man is getting better. Woman is getting better. Life, Liberty, Happiness—all getting better. And chickle. Better and better. Then why not English Spelling? Dear friends, I expect results from you. Let us sing the Ode."

A gasoline organ began to play at the end of the apartment, and we profound scholars stood up and sang together:—

"A beautiful pome," said Lysander Totts, on my other side.

"Where were you educated?" I asked him.

"Surracuse, Noo Yorruk," he responded; and he blew his large nose.

"And now, dear friends," Masticator was saying, "I leave you. Remember the poor foreigners, remember the little children. It is for them that the English language exists; and for them we must, therefore, smooth our spelling's cruel path. I expect results, dear friends." So saying, he was gone.

"Yes, there is a dollar-sign in his jaw," repeated Miss Appleby.

"Suggestions are now in order," said Kibosh, taking the chairman's seat.

Three profound scholars stood up. "The only way——" they began, with one voice.

"Professor Flawless Nathan Maverick has the floor," said Kibosh. "I presume the Professor will think no change in pecan nuts necessary." And the chairman smiled sociably at the scholar.

"The only way," said Maverick, "is to abolish all words that foreigners cannot spell."

"You mean cut 'em out of the language, suh?" inquired Jesse Willows.

"I do."

"Phew!" whistled Willows.

"Order, gentlemen," smiled the chairman. "Professor Camillo Cottsill has the floor."

"The only way," said this scholar, "is to abolish all words that children cannot spell."

"Phew!" repeated Willows.

"Order, gentlemen, please," said the chairman, gently tapping an inkstand with a pencil. But he was not heeded.

"Who are you whistling at?" demanded Camillo Cottsill.

"Can't yore children spell?" retorted Willows.

"Can yours?" shouted Cottsill.

At this Jesse Willows blushed a deep red, and so did Miss Appleby.

"He is not married, Professor," said Kibosh, tapping the inkstand soothingly.

"My little daughter Zola B. can spell everything," said Maverick.

"How about the others?" demanded Cottsill.

"My salary only affords me one," stated Maverick, with resignation.

"Then how can you judge?" said Cottsill. "Receive, and believe, and bereave should be cut out at once."

"They should not," said Maverick.

"Oh, cut everything out," sighed Willows.

"Hup, hup, hup, hup," began Professor Egghorn.

"The author of Mustard Plasters has the floor," said Kibosh, with civility.

"The only way," continued Egghorn, "is to hup, hup, hup."

"Start the organ, please," said Kibosh to an assistant; and while the gasoline music played, "My spelling 'tis of thee," Kibosh walked round the table and gave every one an individual box of chickle. We chewed in silence, waiting for the voice of Professor Egghorn to go again.

"Hup, hup," said he, at length; "phonetic."

"I object!" Cottsill and Maverick called out loudly together.

"I move it's phonetic," said Totts.

"Second the hup, hup," said Egghorn.

"Those in favor——" Kibosh began.

"That's not properly seconded," interrupted Cottsill.

"Motion!" finished Egghorn, with a shriek. And we carried phonetic by eighteen to two.

"Since Professor Egghorn has shown us the only way," said Kibosh, "will he not kindly lead off with his suggestions for a reform list?"

But once again the professor's utterance was transfixed.

"Give the pore gennleman a piece of chalk," said Willows, "and send him to the blackboa'd."

With the blackboard we now made visible progress, which I decided it was best for the present not to interrupt. Let as many suggestions as possible be made; then we could weed them out. Consent was undivided upon a number of words, and some old spelling passed away in peace. The letter u disappeared from honor and favor, although, with much surprise, I overheard Miss Appleby saying to herself that she intended to retain it in all her private correspondence. The k was kicked out of Frederic.

("There's nothing new about that, either," said Miss Appleby, in a whisper.)

"But I shall not permit any such liberty to be taken with my own name," said Professor Maverick, firmly; and this was conceded to him, Professor Totts objecting.

"We shall never reach consistency at this rate," grumbled Lysander Totts.

"Who came here to be consistent?" retorted Maverick.

"We came here for spelling reform," added Camillo Cottsill.

("Good gracious," said Miss Appleby, under her breath.)

Presently it was the letter h that occupied us; and old honour now became onor (some were for oner, but gave in), followed by erb, our, and umor.

"What's that?" demanded Totts, pointing to our.

"Time of day," answered Maverick. "Sixty minutes make one our."

"Then nobody can tell it from our cat, our cow," said Professor Totts.

"We can't help that," said Maverick.

"We're only here for simplification," Cottsill said again.

("Good gracious," repeated Miss Appleby.)

"Make it ower," suggested Cottsill; and this was done.

"Make it minits, too," said Totts; and this was done.

"Make it sekonds," said Maverick; and this was done.

Cottsill turned to Egghorn at the blackboard. "Add eir, umble, otel, and istorical," said he.

"No, he sha'n't!" cried Totts, fiercely.

"Are we phonetic or not?" demanded Cottsill, turning on him.

("You're a pack of geese," said Miss Appleby.)

"I never said umble in my life!" shouted Totts.

"I reckon he don't use the aixpression," said Willows.

"And if istorical is adopted, I'll resign now," Totts continued.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," protested Kibosh.

"I move those last h's be laid on the table," said Maverick; and this was done.

"Past participles," Egghorn now wrote on the blackboard. "Termination ed to be changed to t; for instance, blest, exprest, dro——"

"What are you going to do with rest?" interrupted Totts.

"And test?" said some one down the table.

"And nest?" another called out.

"Can't you let him finish?" said Cottsill. And Egghorn continued, "Dropt, stopt, spilt, kilt, and so forth."

("Kilt!" whispered Miss Appleby. "Oh, dear!")

"Rattlet instead of rattled will look funny," observed some one.

"So will mart and wart," remarked Willows, "instead of marred and warred."

"If you have rattlet and mart and wart," yelled Totts, "I'll resign right now, right now, right now!"

"Who thought of having them, having them, having them?" thundered Cottsill.

"Gentlemen! Oh, Gentlemen!" wailed Kibosh.

"But consistency——" objected Maverick.

"You cut out consistency yourself," Cottsill reminded him. We despatched the past participles, and came also without much disturbance through catalog, demagog, and so forth (vogue and rogue made some trouble, and our fundamental principle of inconsistency had once more to be asserted), but when their blood was roused and the fire of simplification grew hot in them, and they adopted the following with cheers and noises of feet——

I felt that we had really got near the weeding-out point, especially when Jesse Willows rose and added fleez. "Plural of dogbiters," he explained, and sat down quietly. At this Miss Appleby gave one brief, happy laugh, but at once resumed a singular tapping of her foot which I had begun to observe. We now thoroughly phoneticked many words: blud, for instance, and wunss (which is so much phoneticker than once!) and the days of the week: Munday, for instance, and Toozday. (I say Tewsday, myself, but I did not mention it to these profound American scholars.)

"My little daughter Zola B.," said Professor Maverick, "can always spell Wednesday."

"My nine children never can," said Totts.

"I withdraw the objection," said Maverick; and so it was Wensday.

Skwirl, for squirrel, was next agreed upon, and lepard, and eegl. And as the blood of the scholars grew ever hotter and hotter, Constitooshun, Deklarayshun, and United Staits were adopted.

"But my Zola B.——" began Maverick.

"What are you-all goin' to call yore next?" asked Willows.

Maverick sighed. "My salary only affords——"

"Beg yore pardon, suh, I forgot," said Willows, with sympathy.

It was here that I rose. "Gentlemen," I said, "let us do it right. Of course, English spelling is but a rag-bag of lawlessness."

"He has said that before," muttered Jesse Willows.

"But," I continued, "the sun never sets on English spelling."

"I object to these constant, trivial interruptions," stated Cottsill.

"Yes, let us onward," urged the chairman.

"Play ball!" added Totts.

"Chew gum!" finished Cottsill.

"I'm through," Egghorn said, sitting down.

It was beyond my power to guide them. I also sat down. I also was through.

"Through?" exclaimed Totts. "That reminds me." And running to his blackboard he wrote:—

"What's that thing?" asked Willows.

"Hup, hup," began Egghorn.

"Through," replied Totts, raising his voice.

"What?" said Willows, raising his voice, too.

"Through, through!" answered the convention in a body.

And Miss Appleby, amid the general din, remarked, "That's the way a pig would spell if it got the chance."

"Thru, clu, blu, nu, hu," wrote Totts.

"Hu? Hu?" repeated Willows, vacantly; "what's hu?"

"Hup, hup, hup," vainly continued Egghorn, waving his arms.

"Hu's who," explained Cottsill, loudly.

"Who, who!" explained the whole convention to Willows.

"Booh, pooh!" said Willows. And running to the blackboard he added:

"Bu, pu, and stu, also glu."

But Egghorn was now standing on his chair, and screaming, "Hup, hup, hup," with the most energetic violence.

"Oh, write it!" every one cried out to him.

They lifted Egghorn down from his chair, and he ran eagerly to his blackboard, upon which he wrote, "This is illiterate, this is unscholarly."

And again the convention cried out together, "We're not here to be scholarly, we're not here to be literate."

"Have yore way, gennlemen," said Jesse Willows, "I'll stand for anything."

"Well, I can't stand this any longer!" exclaimed Miss Appleby; and rising to her pretty feet, she continued, "Gentlemen, in your charitable solicitude for foreigners, you may be making our spelling easy for Lithuanians (though I doubt it), but you are making it quite impossible for the English."

Upon this a cold silence fell, and then, "And who are the English, madam?" asked Cottsill.

Miss Appleby gave her delightful brief laugh. "I'm sorry you don't know, sir," said she, "for I didn't come here to begin your education." And she sat down. There was an impulse in me to call her Gertrude, but I felt it to be premature.

A general murmuring confusion of consulting and dissenting voices now arose among the scholars.

"But what did you come here for?" I asked Miss Appleby.

"Not to see unbroken dogs put their muddy paws all over the greatest language in the world," she retorted.

"Dear me, dear me," I returned, with soothing deprecation, for she was plainly very much incensed, "then what did you come for?"

"Oh, for reasons," she returned evasively.

Doubts that I could not define began suddenly to fill my mind, and I said to her, "Didn't you write about Shakespeare?"

"A college joke," she answered contemptuously. "I'm writing a poem now. I shall call it, 'How we brought the Good Spelling from Ghent to Aix.'"

"Then you don't believe in the Higher Spelling?" I asked.

"No!" she declared, with defiance.

"Does Professor Willows?" I pursued.

"Hadn't you better ask him about that?" she replied.

I think my face must have turned the reddest that anger can paint faces; for now, at any rate, I had no doubts as to how I had been made game of in the private car. Yes, they had mocked me. The impudent young man had manufactured absurd spelling for my serious attention, and he and Miss Appleby had then made merry together over it, and over myself. But before I could frame a fitting rebuke to the frivolous though lovely young woman beside me, a distracting hubbub of voices was set up, and through this I heard Kibosh calling:—

"On your blackboards, gentlemen, on your blackboards."

The convention gradually heard him, too, and scholar after scholar bounded from his chair, seized a piece of chalk, and began to write. Only one was left, who stood at his place, pouring forth the most execrable sounds I have ever heard.

"Professor Dudelsacker has the floor," said Kibosh.

"Burrmeowskreeyiyiwurrburrwowwowmeow," went the professor.

"Turn that Central Pennsylvania Dutch quacker out!" shouted some one.

"I've resigned already meowowwow," squealed Dudelsacker, in a fury; and he took his departure at once.

But this brought us no calm. Twenty pieces of chalk were rattling on the blackboards like a platoon of busy telegraphic instruments. Each scholar was making his own list for the new dictionary of English, and I read the lists of Totts, Maverick, and Cottsill, so far as they had written them. Jesse Willows was writing, too, with sweeping flourishes; but I had ceased to place faith in his integrity.

"Awringe," I murmured aloud, in ignorance of its meaning; but my own voice revealed to me that it was our chief Florida fruit, as pronounced by Lysander Totts, of Numa Pompilius, New York, discoverer of Cleopatra's true sex. The whole great West was rattling away on the boards behind me, but what I saw in front of me was enough to hold my attention; and my eyes were straying back and forth between awringe and grantha, when Totts, happening to glance up from his work, beheld the work of Maverick next him.

He stopped abruptly. "Rud?" he inquired of the professor from Fishball University, author of Pecan Nuts.

"Road," explained Maverick, writing out the old spelling. "Road, boat, coat."

"Hm," said Totts, with disapprobation.

"But what is grantha?" I whispered to Miss Appleby.

"Can it be a breakfast food?" she suggested; and again I wished to call her Gertrude.

Totts was still gazing at Maverick's list. "Hm. Yes," he repeated. "Bean talk from Boston. We don't want it."

"Are we phonetic or not?" returned Maverick, sharply.

But Totts had now caught sight of Cottsill's list. "Anywheres?" he read aloud. "Why anywheres? Rub all those out."

"I will not," declared the author of Nostalgia in the Lobster. "I guess if you can be phonetic, I can."

"I'm afraid they're skipping grantha," said Miss Appleby.

"Who says anywheres?" demanded Totts.

"I do," snapped Cottsill.

"Well, I don't," Totts replied. "And, what's more, I won't."

Cottsill raised his voice. "I guess I can be phonetic just as——"

"Anywheres is vulgar," interrupted Totts.

"Vulgar yourself!" screamed Cottsill, jumping up and down.

"Vulgar! Vulgar!" chimed in Maverick, whom the term bean talk had nettled.

But Totts had spied the list of Jesse Willows, and was pointing at it disdainfully. "And pray," said he, "what may a coat-house be?"

Now the handsome young man from Paw-paw was the last person to select for addressing in such a tone as Lysander Totts had taken.

"I beg yore pardon, suh?" he remarked, so politely that I became filled with apprehension.

Miss Appleby was gazing at him with all her eyes. "What do you think of him?" she whispered to me.

I suppose that indignation at his unwarrantable treatment of me in the car rendered me imprudent. "My dear Miss Appleby," I said to her, "my dear Gertrude, he is as beautiful as the day, as ignorant as a Socialist, and as dishonest as a plumber."

"How dare you speak of my husband so?" she replied. "We were married this morning. That's all we came for to your silly convention. Good-by." And rising, she swept out of the room.

But her exit was unobserved. The great West was still rattling on its blackboards, Maverick and Cottsill were scowling darkly at Totts. Totts was pointing one finger at coat-house, and Willows was smiling steadily at Totts, in a manner that now convinced me we were approaching the edge of something quite particular. Nor did even the bridegroom know that his bride had left us.

"I beg yore pardon, suh?" he repeated.

"Coat-house. What's that?" said Totts.

"It is whah they'd have you, suh, if they caught you teachin' any o' those railroad accidents o' yore's to the young."

"Yes, indeed; yes, indeed!" cried Maverick and Cottsill, eagerly.

Totts loudly blew his nose. "It shall remain court-house in the dictionary of scholars," he remarked.

Willows ran his eye up and down Totts' list, and then up and down Totts. "Schooling," he softly returned, "has done powerful little for the Amurrican who sails to Yurrup and puts surrup on his hot cakes."

"Yes, indeed; yes, indeed!" said Cottsill and Maverick again.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" pleaded Kibosh, "do not quarrel."

"Kwawrul, you mean," smiled Jesse Willows. "It's immawrul to kwawrul in Surracuse, Noo Yorruk."

Totts now began to show signs of jumping up and down.

"Have we adopted phonetic spelling, or have we not?" he roared.

"Not yore kind," said Willows.

"Yore!" echoed Totts. "Listen to that dialect!" And he blew his noise more loudly.

"Hup, hup," began Egghorn; but his voice stuck as usual.

"You should get a chauffeur," said Cottsill, severely, to him.

"Hup, hup. Compromise," finished Egghorn.

"Ah, yes, gentlemen, there we have it!" said Kibosh, earnestly. "Compromise is progress. Let us all accept one another. Thus the cause will profit."

His exhortation produced a brief, a very brief, lull. Each looked at the neighboring blackboards in silence; and Kibosh, doubtless with the idea of harmony, set the organ once more to playing, "My spelling 'tis of thee," while the rattling West continued to create a new language behind us.

At length Cottsill sighed. "Very well," he said, "for the sake of anywheres, I'll vote for surrup."

"That's wise, that's kind, that's good," said Kibosh; and he beat one hand gently on the table.

At this hopeful point, Jesse Willows noticed, for the first time, that no lady was now present, and his long body made a singular twisting and free motion beneath his clothes.

"I will vote for rud and anywheres," Totts said. "But I doubt if I can accept coat-house."

Jesse Willows took him instantly by the nose. "You'll accept nothin'," said he, with great sweetness; and he shook him forward and back. "I am weary of you and yore antics," and he shook him right and left. "You're goin' to rub out everything you have written," and he shook him round and round.

"Help," gurgled the struggling Totts. "Help!"

"No, indeed; no, indeed," cried Maverick and Cottsill, delighted.

"You gentlemen are included," said Willows to them, and they both hastily covered their noses with their hands. "I don't mean that way," he continued. "But you're goin' to rub yore lists out, too. Why, you're the contemptiblest of all the great American frauds. Just because you have written a picayune book on some picayune specialty, you pass for bein' educated in our half-civilized country. Put you among genuine scholars and you would look like old gum shoes. I know my accent is provincial," he paused and looked at Totts for a moment, "but it's a heap prettier'n yore's," he shook Totts round and round again, "and you and I are just goin' to let the English language take care of herself. She has done it for a thousand years, and she'll do it for a thousand more, changin' what she pleases an' keepin' what she pleases."

So saying, the young man, even as one drags a resisting dog by a chain, dragged the howling Totts by his nose to the blackboard, and forced the rubber into his hand; and as Totts hung back his firmly imprisoned organ received a still more acute sensation, whereat he leaped into the air, and erased his Surracuse list at one sweep. And next, since Cottsill and Maverick were hanging back also, one with his arms shielding grantha, while the other shielded anywheres, Totts was conducted to those words. "Out with grantha," commanded Jesse. "We'll keep it grandfather for a while yet, Mr. Bean Talk." They attempted to defend their lists, but vainly; and in the conflict that arose, a rubber flew crooked and hit one of the great West sharply in the back of the neck. He, being under a misapprehension, thereupon kicked his neighbor savagely, and in a moment all the profound scholars engaged together in a blind war, rubbing out one another's lists, whacking one another's heads, and often rolling by twos and threes beneath the table, from which dictionaries and inkstands were falling continuously. It was with the greatest difficulty that I got the gasoline organ between myself and harm's way. Jesse Willows had mounted upon the table with the still faintly bellowing Totts, whom he led slowly from one end to the other, amid the clouds of chalk and the general bedlam.

"Gentlemen," he said, "dear friends" (and these words stopped everything), "I am well pleased with what you have accomplished. I expected results, and I have got them. The surgeon awaits you in the House of Bandages."

No serious wounds were found; but also no scholar was found to be upon speaking terms with any other. By the generosity of Masticator each was sent home separately in a private car, on a special train, with plenty of chickle.

Masticator had created all the publicity that he desired. New students swarmed in armies to his University, and he presently issued a billion more shares of Chickle common. The press of the whole country rang with the enterprise.

was one of the first headlines that greeted me upon my homeward journey. Yes; Jesse Willows and Gertrude Appleby were the exceptions; these two scholars had gone away in the same car together to their honeymoon, while I returned lonely to the index of my forthcoming volume.

Heigho!