the constantly improving standards of education, and the eventual abolition of illiteracy, there would be a constantly increasing tendency to follow the best models.
Every step, taken now to simplify English spelling, to make it represent more accurately the spoken word, is a step toward restoring the purity and precision of English speech.
Spelling and Education
In the preceding pages the Simplified Spelling Board has undertaken to show that the changes it proposes wil make our spelling more correct sientifically and historically, wil make it easier to spel correctly, and wil tend to improve and to standardize pronunciation. These ar all positiv advantages appealing to those who know something of the past history of the language, who appreciate it for its richness and flexibility, and who love and admire it for the wonderful literature that has been written in it, and that forever wil be preservd in it, no matter in what spelling it was first written, and is now, or may hereafter be, printed.
It is, however, in considering its relation to education that the broadest and strongest, as wel as the most directly personal plea for a better mode of spelling can be made.
Reason in Children
Since the bulk of human knowledge is recorded in books, one of the first steps in the education of the child is to teach him to read. Told that each separate letter, or group of letters, printed in his primer or reader represents a spoken word, the child, being gifted with reason, expects to find an invariable re-
