xt morning, when we
assembled to begin our work. We sat round an imposing table some twenty
strong--for all the profound scholars were now arrived--and in front of
each scholar, on the ample green baize table-cover, was a great
dictionary, with a great glass inkstand and writing materials. Tall
blackboards stood behind us, waiting to receive the words we should
reform; but the best of it was to find myself sitting next Miss Appleby,
with Willows quite an agreeable distance away. Kibosh had arranged all
our seats, and it is the best thing I know of him.

[Illustration: Masticator B. Fellows.]

When Masticator B. Fellows entered to open our convention, it was
plain at once whence Kibosh had acquired his manner and his
appearance--so far as he could acquire this latter: the secretary might
have been an early, bad photograph of the magnate. To see Masticator, he
was the creature of brotherly love, the preacher of benign gospels, the
teacher of female academies; no smell of Senate or Syndicate hung about
him. Bald, with a silken skull-cap, bland, with his ten pointed fingers
meeting as if to bless, with a sunrise smile, and a black coat as long
and unlovely as conscious virtue, he stood before us in benevolent
silence, and we rose as one scholar. But at once he motioned us to sit
down.

"I think there's a dollar-sign in his jaw," whispered Miss Appleby to
me.

Already Masticator was addressing us, slowly and softly.

"Dear friends," he said, "be welcome. I am worth two hundred and
forty-five millions. Thank God that you are not. Thank God that you are
poor. Thank God for your scanty meals and clothing, and your ceaseless
failure to make both ends meet. Pray God you may die poor. How I envy
you all your blessed privilege of struggle! Thank God, and now to
business.

"Everything is getting better. Man is getting better. Woman is getting
better. Life, Liberty, Happiness--all getting better. And chickle.
Better and better. Then why not English Spelling? Dear friends, I expect
results from you. Let us sing the Ode."

A gasoline organ began to play at the end of the apartment, and we
profound scholars stood up and sang together:--

My spelling 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of spelling-bee,
Of thee I sing.
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
Land where my fathers dide,
For spelling simplifide
Let freedom ring

"A beautiful pome," said Lysander Totts, on my other side.

"Where were you edu