most part, people do not know that there is so much as an
art of spelling possible; the tyranny of orthography lies so heavily on
the land. Your common editors and their printers are a mere orthodox
spelling police, and at the least they rigorously blot out all the
delightful frolics of your artist in spelling before his writings reach
the public eye. But commonly, as I have proved again and again, the
slightest lapse into rococo spelling is sufficient to secure the
rejection of a manuscript without further ado.

And to end,--a word about Phonographers. It may be that my title has led
the reader to anticipate some mention of these before. They are a kind
of religious sect, a heresy from the orthodox spelling. They bind one
another by their mysteries and a five-shilling subscription in a
"soseiti to introduis an impruvd method of spelinj." They come across
the artistic vision, they and their Soseiti, with an altogether
indefinable offence. Perhaps the essence of it is the indescribable
meanness of their motive. For this phonography really amounts to a
study of the cheapest way of spelling words. These phonographers are
sweaters of the Queen's English, living meanly on the selvage of honest
mental commerce by clipping the coin of thought. But enough of them.
They are mentioned here only to be disavowed. They would substitute one
narrow orthodoxy for another, and I would unfold the banner of freedom.
Spell, my brethren, as you will! Awake, arise, O language living in
chains; let Butter's spelling be our Bastille! So with a prophetic
vision of liberated words pouring out of the dungeons of a
spelling-book, this plea for freedom concludes. What trivial arguments
there are for a uniform spelling I must leave the reader to discover.
This is no place to carp against the liberation I foresee, with the glow
of the dawn in my eyes.

INCIDENTAL THOUGHTS ON A BALD HEAD

I was asked to go, quite suddenly, and found myself there before I had
time to think of what it might be. I understood her to say it was a
meeting of some "Sunday society," some society that tried to turn the
Sabbath from a day of woe to a day of rejoicing. "St. George's Hall,
Langham Place," a cab, and there we were. I thought they would be
picturesque Pagans. But the entertainment was the oddest it has ever
been my lot to see, a kind of mystery. The place was dark, except for a
big circle of light on a screen, and a dismal man with a long stick was
talki