While the others are fighting it out, the various transition styles will do something to prepare parents to accept a more nearly perfect style for their children, and perhaps take an interest in seeing the various counsels of perfection fight each other.

A few words have already found their way into advertisements—­tho, thru, thoro (a damnable way of spelling thurro), and the shortened terminal gram(me)s, og(ue)s and et(te)s; and these and a few more have found their way into correspondence on commonplace subjects; and the interest in the topic, especially among educators, is spreading.  But most of the inconsistencies will probably bother and delay children and forreners until they are given something with some approach to consistency.

* * * * *

After we fight to something like agreement on a system, how are we to get it going?

It does not seem extravagant to expect that as soon as the weight of scholarly opinion endorses a vocabulary from our present alphabet consistent enough to afford a base for a reasonable spelling book, spelling books and readers will be prepared for the schools, and adopted by advanced teachers.  Many are clamoring for such now.  When the youngsters have mastered these, which they will do in a small fraction of the time wasted on their present books, they will of their own accord pick up without troubling their teachers a knowledge of the present forms.  This they have always done when their teaching has been by the various phonetic methods with special letters, and have done both in much less time than they have needed for learning in the ordinary way.  But they will prefer the reasonable forms, and this demand the publishers will probably not be slow to supply.