7
A hundred ways to spell our words as talk'd.
He simplify'd until his fancy bred
A system quite as simple as his head.
In scholarship disastrous change he wrought,
And alter'd, as he went, for want of thought.
But I, attentive, heard with joyful ear
The wild distortions, and perversions queer.
Why could not I defend my ill-spell'd page
In progress' name, and with reformer's rage?
With hope renew'd, I hastened home to write,
And passing wondrous was my work that night;
For classic purity I sought no more,
But strove to make worse blunders than before.
O fickle fortune! In a week my name
From scholars' praise attain'd immortal fame,
Whilst other scribes with vague orthography
Seiz'd on the clever ruse, and copy'd me.
Today in ev'ry "Skateville Amateur"
Amorphous letters pass as language pure,
And when some pompous pedant dares to raise
A voice remonstrant 'gainst our foolish ways,
We never fail the apt retort to give,
But damn him as a blind Conservative.
Yet why on us your angry hand or wrath use?
We do but ape Professor B M !
- H. P. L.
The Crime of the Century
By H. P. Lovecraft
The present European war, occuring as it does in an age of hysterical sentimentality and unsound political doctrines, has called forth from the sympathizers of each set of belligerents an unexampled torrent of indiscriminate denunciation.
The effeminate idealist, half awaked from his roseate vision of universal brotherhood, shrieks at the mutual slaughter of his fellow-men, or singles out individualists of cruelty or treachery as the objects of his well-meaning rage; while the erratic socialist, saturated with false notions of equality and democracy, raves unendingly against cruel systems of government which sacrifice a peaceful peasantry to the greed and ambition of their warlike masters.
