e memory, whether he is to write _you_, or _yu_, or
_yoo,_ or _ewe_, or _yew_, or _yue_, as in _flue_, or even _yo_ as in
_do_, and to determine when and in what cases respectively he is to use
those different forms?

The truth is, that each elementary sound that enters into the composition
of words is represented in our language by so many different combinations
of letters, in different cases, that the child has very little clue from
the sound of a syllable to guide him in the spelling of it. We ourselves,
from long habit, have become so accustomed to what we call the right
spelling--which, of course, means nothing more than the customary one--that
we are apt to imagine, as has already been said, that there is some natural
fitness in it; and a mode of representing the same sound, which in one case
seems natural and proper, in another appears ludicrous and absurd. We smile
to see _laugh_ spelled _larf,_ just as we should to see _scarf_ spelled
_scaugh_, or _scalf_, as in _half_; and we forget that this perception of
apparent incongruity is entirely the result of long habit in us, and has no
natural foundation, and that children can not be sensible of it, or have
any idea of it whatever. They learn, in learning to talk, what sound serves
as the name by which the drops of water that they find upon the grass in
the morning is denoted, but they can have no clue whatever to guide them
in determining which of the various modes by which precisely that sound is
represented in different words, as _dew, do, due, du, doo_, and _dou_,
is to be employed in this case, and they become involved in hopeless
perplexity if they attempt to imagine "_how it ought to be spelled_;" and
we think them stupid because they can not extricate themselves from the
difficulty on our calling upon them to "think!" No doubt there is a
reason for the particular mode of spelling each particular word in the
language--but that reason is hidden in the past history of the word and in
facts connected with its origin and derivation from some barbarous or dead
language, and is as utterly beyond the reach of each generation of spellers
as if there were no such reasons in existence. There can not be the
slightest help in any way from the exercise of the thinking or the
reasoning powers.

It is true that the variety of the modes by which a given sound may be
represented is not so great in all words as it is in these examples, though
with respect to a vast number of