There are eighty-two millions of us people that use
this orthography, and it ought to be simplified in
our behalf, but it is kept in its present condition
to satisfy one million people who like to have their
literature in the old form. That looks to me
to be rather selfish, and we keep the forms as they
are while we have got one million people coming in
here from foreign countries every year and they have
got to struggle with this orthography of ours, and
it keeps them back and damages their citizenship for
years until they learn to spell the language, if they
ever do learn. This is merely sentimental argument.
People say it is the spelling of Chaucer and Spencer
and Shakespeare and a lot of other people who do not
know how to spell anyway, and it has been transmitted
to us and we preserved it and wish to preserve it
because of its ancient and hallowed associations.
Now, I don’t see that there is any real argument
about that. If that argument is good, then it
would be a good argument not to banish the flies and
the cockroaches from hospitals because they have been
there so long that the patients have got used to them
and they feel a tenderness for them on account of
the associations. Why, it is like preserving
a cancer in a family because it is a family cancer,
and we are bound to it by the test of affection and
reverence and old, mouldy antiquity.
I think that this declaration to improve this orthography
of ours is our family cancer, and I wish we could
reconcile ourselves to have it cut out and let the
family cancer go.
Now, you see before you the wreck and ruin of what
was once a young person like yourselves. I am
exhausted by the heat of the day. I must take
what is left of this wreck and run out of your presence
and carry it away to my home and spread it out there
and sleep the sleep of the righteous. There
is nothing much left of me but my age and my righteousness,
but I leave with you my love and my blessing, and may
you always keep your youth.
Addressto the Redding (Conn.) Library
association,
October
28, 1908
Suppose this library had been in operation a few weeks
ago, and the burglars who happened along and broke
into my house—taking a lot of things they
didn’t need, and for that matter which I didn’t
need—had first made entry into this institution.
Picture them seated here on the floor, poring by the
light of their dark-lanterns over some of the books
they found, and thus absorbing moral truths and getting
a moral uplift. The whole course of their lives
would have been changed. As it was, they kept
straight on in their immoral way and were sent to
jail.
For all we know, they may next be sent to Congress.
And, speaking of burglars, let us not speak of them
too harshly. Now, I have known so many burglars—not
exactly known, but so many of them have come near
me in my various dwelling-places, that I am disposed
to allow them credit for whatever good qualities they
possess.
