THE IDLER.

West Coast Times, Issue 3146, 4 November 1875, Page 2

THE IDLER.

So we are to have a Spelling Bee. It is time these orthographical encounters should be improved upon ; it has yot awfully stale fun to see one's acquaintances get on a platform and shew the public how much they don't know. What is correct in spelling at one time, is not at another, in fact like bob wigs, false plaits, an 4 eau sucree it is a matter of taste and fashion. Geoffrey or Chaucer would be hissed off a Hokitika stage by our educated larrikins in less than a minute, if they attempted to spell. This is how Chaucer used to spell— "Wif of Bath,"— " The Reve was a slendre colerike man His berd was shave as ueighe as ever he can." (this is poetry) and Geoffrey spelt—welljust as he chose. Walker (not Bob) would be out of Conrt with his X's, for like Bacon and Shakespere he used that letter in such words as musick, antick, etc. Lexicographers are now going in for ab >lition of the letter C, on the ground that any sound it conveys can be given by S or X, and now it is the fashion to spell such words as Celtic, Keltic. A very clever man told me the other day that i was a fool, because I asked him to spell church in English without a C, why, it would ha like a Bishop without one. Putting taste and fashion aside, however, the Spelling Bee mi^ht be in words in constant use, and not in obsolete or exotic words, which even very fair scholars bave never met with. The spelling of participles of verbs would afford as much instruction and amusement as the blu idering over such words as " Polyphrasticontinomimegalondation" and making a harvest ior the dentists. The participles of such words as blot, might be tried as blot, blotted, blotting, and then try the experiment on bloat, and there will be seen how nice folks must be to aT ; again in the verb distil, the L's are double in the participles, but if this be tried in detail, competitors will make an Lof a mess of it. It would not be a bad thing either, to ask competitors why they thusly their words prunouncley, as, for instance why they sound s-h-o-e, shew, and s-h-e-w, shoio ; and' when they have done this, they had bttter go to bed, when most probably the scraps they have stolen from the feast of language will arrange tor a visit of the nocturnal female hoise. Some ot the boys are making amazing progress under our educational system, particularly in geography. Here s how one youth, in a written exerciie, describes London (sic). : — " London is a small village about one thousand six hundred and fortytwo miles from the South Pacific ocean ; bounded on the north by Melbourne ; on the east by the Medierrane.m sea ; west by the Straitjj of Gibraltar, the Bay of Biscay and the Irish sea; and, on the south, by Cook's Strait and South I America." This youth is worth looking after ; if he was trained he would make a splendid editor for a postal ejuide. I think he must be nearly related to the old gentleman at home, who directs his letters to — Melbourne, Swan River, New South Wales. When Macklin boasted to Foote that he could repeat anything after once reading it, Sam wrote that well-known incomprehensible story about her poing into the garden to pick cabbage leaves to make apple pies, and the she bear going to the barber's about the famine m soap, her untimely death, and the nuptials of the scion ot the spiral p >le, and the catch game of " catch, as catch who can," in the presence of the Garnelics and the Goblilies and the Picininnies, powder running out of tbeir boot-heels and the great Panjandrum, little round button at the top included. Of course this licked Macklin, and the following licks me, it is from the " agony" column of contemporary — "When man takes God to be all love, he cannot see Him ; the devil must go out of the man as well as the beast. God is also just ; wronrj is not, when justly estimated, as the eating of an apple, which the infantile mind thinks can be atoned for by a present. Wrong is a thing of far greater moment, being expressed by the tears, the groans, and blood of, alike an insult and injury to, God." The author of this should be looked after, otherwise he will soon be writing poetry, which no man in I his senses ever doei. So the Good Templars have found a Champion in W.H.C. Who W.H.C. is I don't know, and don't want to know, but it is evident that it is an ancient member of the order, and it is also evident, that that member is of the female persuasion, perhaps a W.I.G. At any rate she wears a false front, or else she would not accuse me of assertions I did not make. I never intended to convey the idea, that combination for mutual reformation wag wrong, or, that in itself Templarism was a social evil; so far from doing so, I attempted to ridicule and satirize the exclusiveness of the local branch of the order, and had a basis of fact for stating that many who had never overstepped the bounds of propriety had been rejected as members, while nuny who have very much transgressed in that particular are looked upon as pillars of the order. Indeed, I wish the order to spread, and one must be very blind and prejudiced not to see that it is, and may be, a means of potent good. Many families now feel the benefit of Ub operations, and so do their tradespeople, including the publican, but what I do object to is. any combination for coercing aucb as differ from the order, because any such movement becomes tyrannical, and tyranny is always met by evasion, or resistance, or, these failing, people will try to escape from the operation of obnoxious laws. Tyranny is always an evil, and evil

cannot suppress evil, and the pxoctions of a dominant mob) are mbjtt Wnicioifc aad intolerable than |hose of an autegVat. And so it has beep found in thjjStaWl named in my fcrmajt lefier. To giioteffom my authbrjfy would be buf fl reiterate my former Jtatemenlf Any on? pa| ?ee it for h ' ms .OT » number of fpQuarterly Review, whfdh "W. H/e." can digest wih another cup of cold tea and a snovrban or t wo tbTtfWn iH:"If tr W:HC: ., is IhTb'eat 1 ? Bay '*« I W>Pg on d«n^ autQ o"ty; at any rate t have done some good,- for fam anthenticallv i .'Wfr™ mb - eco « s Goojf Templar. 2S? oW" '• nw i fes ' W their 1 vesSe writes "truth is a good dog, bSR barks too closely to the heels of error, it is re \t y t0 efc itß brains kicked out " With these few remarks I pledgelhe health of the Good Templars in the ' rosey ' just for the stomach's sake limotby. The London Times said, that on the morning Tom Sayers and Heenan fought, so much did that "little mill" 'engage public attention that even were the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to meet they would immediately begin to speculate lon the erent. Here, in like manner; so much have sweeps en-aged general interest that every one appears to have speculated in them, and all of those who have drawn horses have made beasts of themsplves that is, they have become lions or lionesses' tor the nonce, and any one who is not up m, the betting list is thought to be but " small potatoes and few in a heap" and uunt for conversation or society. My old mend GHassmore has got it particularly bad upon the brain. He came home the other night with a whiskey skin, soon he gurgled m somnolent speech the soft and ' euphonious name of Lurline. " Libertine." hissed Mrs G., making a fell swoop at the sweeper, "mention, the name of that Coquette tome!" "It's Calumny," gasped out Glassmore "against the Maid of All Work." ' Idleb. * It contains the whole alphabet and a little more. • .