A READING TEST

Southland Times, Issue 22969, 15 August 1936, Page 13

A READING TEST

Mispronounced Words All over America persons have been having fun with the paragraphs printed below. They are jammed with ivords which are frequently mispronounced. Try to rend them aloud with a friend — and a dictionary. Fewer than twenty errors is considered extremely unusudl. Under the azure crouched an indisputable Indian. His forehead was bedizened with, herbage, and he wore a scarlet belt about his abdomen. Though his conduct was exemplary and decorous, he lived in extraordinary squalor. Though, like a patriot, familiar with the tribal legends his parents had taught him, he knew little beyond legendary lere and was ignorant of our national literature and of the process of telegraphy.

He knew nothing of calligraphy and very little about finance. He was not an aspirant for parliament, but he hoped to exorcise evil spirits from the epoch by the advertisement of an Indian sacrifice. When granted a favour he sought the apotheosis of his patron. A piquant matron by his side was his housewife, to whom he gave alternately a meagre maintenance and peremptory commands, for he considered the position irrefragable that to perfect a woman she must be isolated and made to obey. On this point he considered his arguments irrefutable. He appeared to care little for hymeneal harmony. Her peculiarity was bronchitis, which he hoped to cure by launching a tiny raspberry into the interstices of her larynx. The two made a squalid but interesting tableau. The dramatis personae of this scenario were named Elihu (alias Rain-in-the Face) and Minnehaha, his wife. While she was no pianist, she was a dutiful wife. was glad to have her as his coadjutor. Yet in her lonely life he would often harass her with some sardonic inquiry or with a virulent threat to put her in gaol. She would then placate him by cooking for him some flaccid sweet potatoes fried in oleomargarine, hoping he would no longer treat her as a pariah. This antique girl sat by the road, eating Italian almonds and musing over esoteric vagaries. Her temper was as changeable as the hues of a chameleon. An attitude of languor indicated a need of condolence, or of allopathy, and her hair, worn in pyramidal style, made her the cynosure of the tribe. Her tatterdemalion husband would lounge through the livelong day, and at nightfall begin an address to her, with the grimaces and gibberish of a ruffian. Thus:

“Ugh! Wake to your duty and be a docile and notable squaw. Bring my gondola, and let us relieve some granary of its produce.” To which she, with grim raillery, replied: “You blatant blackguard, I won’t. Your truculent commands are not obligatory on me. It would exhaust my strength and enervate my constitution; neither have I dropped to such a degree of decadence as to be a communist.”

Then he coaxed: “Do, dear, and I’ll give you a bouquet and a brooch of diamonds. You shall find it a jocund and not a dolorous task. You are so acclimated that the night air will not hurt you, and you are conversant with my temper when aroused.” But she was implacable. Brandishing a ferrule, he then shouted with vehemence: “What! Shall I not have precedence and homage by my own hearthstone? I’ll teach you the romance of matrimony, beat you like a spaniel, and give your bones over the sepulture!” But she sweetly replied: “Look out for your orthoepy, my love, or I’ll tear your wristband!”