ow in a far distance and are afraid of
guns. They stay at home all the time and go to church on Sunday. They
are al-ways sick. They are always funy and making fun of boy's hands
and they say how dirty. They cant play marbels. I pity them poor things.
They make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. I dont beleave
they ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out every nite and say oh
ant the moon lovely. Thir is one thing I have not told and that is they
al-ways now their lessons bettern boys.

From Mr. Edward Channing's recent article in SCIENCE:

The marked difference between the books now being produced by French,
English, and American travelers, on the one hand, and German explorers,
on the other, is too great to escape attention. That difference is due
entirely to the fact that in school and university the German is taught,
in the first place to see, and in the second place to understand what he
does see.

A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET

(This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last
writing done by Mark Twain on any impersonal subject.)

I have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling
toward Simplified Spelling, from the beginning of the movement three
years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that. It seemed to me to
merely propose to substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of
patching and plugging poor old dental relics with cement and gold and
porcelain paste; what was really needed was a new set of teeth. That is
to say, a new ALPHABET.

The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn't
know how to spell, and can't be taught. In this it is like all other
alphabets except one--the phonographic. This is the only competent
alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in
our language.

That admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired
alphabet, can be learned in an hour or two. In a week the student
can learn to write it with some little facility, and to read it with
considerable ease. I know, for I saw it tried in a public school in
Nevada forty-five years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that
it has remained in my memory ever since.

I wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed)
character. I mean SIMPLY the alphabet; simply the consonants and the
vowels--I don't mean any REDUCTIONS or abbreviations of them, such as
the shorthand writer uses in order to get compre