The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 by Various

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Then, after it is ascertained whether the timidity of the flies is because
this story has been passed around among them, or only because men have
already killed off all but the specially quick and timid ones; we hope our
investigators may find an answer to the farther question: (III) How, if a
tenth of what some folks say against flies is true, the human race has so
long survived?

To avoid misapprehension, it should be added that despite the
availability, in our boyhood, of flies as playmates, we don't like 'em,
especially when they light on our hands to help us write articles for this
REVIEW.

_Setting Bounds to Laughter_

That there is even a measure of personal liberty on the earth, is one of
our most pointed proofs that the universe is governed by design. For
liberty is loved neither by the many nor by the few; its defense has
always been unpopular in the extreme, and can be manfully undertaken only
in an age of moral heroism. The present is no heroic age, and hence our
personal rights fall one by one, without defense, and apparently without
regret. The losses thus incurred must be left to future historians to
weigh and to lament. There is, however, one of our natural rights, now
cruelly beset by its enemies, that is too precious to surrender to the
threnodies of the future historians. This is the right to laugh.

It is scarcely a quarter of a century since the first appearance of
organized efforts to curb the spirit of laughter. All good men and women
were hectored into believing that one should weep, not laugh, over the
absurdities of men in their cups. Next, we were warned that it is unseemly
and unChristian to laugh at a fellow-man's discomfiture--an awkward social
situation, a sermon or a political oration wrecked by stage fright, or a
poem spoilt by a printer's stupidity. Under shelter of the dogma that to
laugh at the ridiculous is unlawful, there have recently grown into vigor
multitudinous anti-laughter alliances, racial, national and professional.
Not many years ago a censorship of Irish jokes was established, and this
was soon followed by an index expurgatorious of Teutonic jokes. Our
colored fellow citizens promptly advanced the claim that jokes at the
expense of their race are "in bad taste"; and country life enthusiasts
solemnly affirmed that the rural and suburban jokes are nothing short of
national disasters. A recent press report informs us that the suffragette
joke has been excluded from the vaudeville circuits throughout the
country. And the movement grows apace. Domestic servants, stenographers,
politicians, college professors, and clergymen are organizing to establish
the right of being ridiculous without exciting laughter.

But what does it all matter? What is laughter but an old-fashioned aid to
digestion, more or less discredited by current medical authority? It is
time we learned that laughter has a social significance: it is the first
stage in the process of understanding one's fellow man. Professor Bergson
to the contrary notwithstanding, you can not laugh with your intellect
alone. An essential element of your laughter is sympathy. You can not
laugh at an idiot, nor at a superman. You can not laugh at a Hindoo or a
Korean; you can hardly force a smile to your lips over the conduct of a
Bulgar, a Serb, or a Slovak. You are beginning to find something comic in
the Italian, because you are beginning to know him. And all the world
laughs at the Irishman, because all the world knows him and loves him.

When Benjamin Franklin walked down the streets of Philadelphia, carrying a
book under his arm, and munching a crust of bread, just one person
observed him, a rosy maiden, who laughed merrily at him. As our old school
readers narrated, with naive surprise, this maiden was destined to become
Franklin's faithful wife. And yet psychology should have led us to expect
such a result. The stupidest small boy making faces or turning somersaults
before the eyes of his pig-tailed inamorata, evidences his appreciation of
the sentimental value of the ridiculous. When did we first grant some
small corner in our hearts to the Chinese? It was when we were introduced
to Bret Harte's gambler:

For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.

The natural history of the racial or professional joke is easily written.
At the outset it is crude and cruel, wholly at the expense of the group
represented. In time the world wearies of an unequal contest, and we have
a new order of jokes, in which the intended victim acquits himself well.
This, too, gives way to a higher order, in which race, nationality or
profession is employed merely as a cloak for common humanity. The
successive stages mark the progress in assimilation, induced, in large
measure, by laughter. There is no other social force so potent in creating
mutual understanding and practical fraternity of spirit; in establishing
the essential unity of mankind underneath its phenomenal diversity.
Setting bounds to laughter: why, this is to indenture the angel of charity
to the father of lies and the lord of hate.

_A Post Graduate School for Academic Donors_

At a recent meeting of an University Montessori Club the case of donors to
colleges and universities was reported on by a special committee. The
majority report drew a pretty heavy indictment. It was shown that the
givers to colleges and universities seldom considered the real needs of
their beneficiaries. Donors liked to give expensive buildings without
endowment for upkeep, liked to give vast athletic fields, rejoiced in
stadiums, affected memorial statuary and stained glass windows, dabbled in
landscape gardening, but seldom were known either to give anything
unconditionally or, specifically, to destine a gift for such uninspiring
needs as more books or professors' pay. The result of giving without first
considering the needs of the benefited college or university, was that
every gift made the beneficiary more lopsided. Certain universities were
almost capsized by their incidental architecture. Others were subsidizing
graduate students to whom the conditions of successful research were
denied. Still others were calling great specialists to the teaching force
without providing the apparatus for the pursuit of these specialties.
Others preferred to offer financial aid to students who were poor--in
every sense. Donors apparently without exception had single-track minds.
They saw plainly enough what they wanted to give, but never took the pains
to see the donation in its relation to the institution as a whole. The
majority report, which was drawn by our famous Latinist, Professor
Claudius Senex, concluded with the despairing note _Timeo Danaos et dona
ferentes_. The minority report was delivered orally by young Simpson Smith
of the department of banking and finance. He "allowed" that everything
alleged by the majority report was true, but saw no use in dwelling on
such truths, since donors always had done and always would do just as they
darned pleased.

The Club took a more hopeful view of the case, and it was voted that our
Club should resolve itself into the trustees and faculty of a Post
Graduate School for Academic Donors. Our committee recommended that we
qualify our advanced students by conferring the lower degree of Heedless
Donor (H.D.) every year upon all givers who can be shown to have given at
random. No method of instruction seemed more appropriate than the seminar
plan of practical exercises based on concrete instances. The first
laboratory experiment was performed in the presence of a Seminar of seven
H.D.'s. in a specially called meeting of married professors attired only
in bath gowns borrowed from the crews and base ball teams. Into this
assembly the class of H.D.'s was suddenly introduced. They naturally
inquired into the meaning of the spectacle, and were informed that in no
case did the mere salary of these professors enable them to wear clothes
at all. "But you do usually wear clothes?" inquired a student of a
favorite professor. "How do you get them?" "By University extension
lecturing at ten dollars a lecture" was the quiet answer. Another
professor explained that he got his clothes by tutoring dull students,
another by book reviewing. One somewhat shamefacedly said the clothes came
from his wife's money. One declined to answer, and, as a matter of fact,
his clothes are habitually first worn by a more fortunate elder brother.

On the whole the results of our first seminary exercise were satisfactory.
One student immediately drew a considerable check for the salary fund,
another, who had been planning to give a hockey rink, said he would think
things over. Still a third deposited forty pairs of slightly worn trousers
with the university treasurer, "for whom it might concern." Only one
accepted the demonstration contentedly. He admitted that low pay and extra
work were hard on the Professors, but he also felt that these outside
activities advertised the university and were good business. Of course you
wore out some professors in the process, but you could always get others.

Our second seminary exercise was of a less spectacular sort. The post
graduate donors were each provided with a bibliography. This in every
instance contained the titles of books that a particular professor or
graduate student in the university would need to consult for his studies
of the ensuing week. It was briefly explained by Professor Senex that
original research could not be successfully accomplished without reference
to all the original sources and to the writings of other scholars. The
bibliographies ran from ten titles or so to nearly a hundred, according to
the nature of the particular research involved. The exercise consisted in
going to the university library and matching these titles of desiderata
with the books actually in the catalogue. After varying intervals, the
post graduate donors returned with their report. Nobody had found more
than half the books sought for: many had found less.

The effect of this demonstration was interesting. The donor who had tended
towards the hockey rink, instead transferred his $100,000 to the book
purchase fund. He said he guessed the old place needed real books more
than it needed artificial ice. Others followed his example according to
their ability.

The student who was satisfied with our bath robe faculty meeting, came
back from the library equally pleased. He had not compared his
bibliography with the catalogue, but a brief general inspection had
convinced him that there were already more books in the library than
anybody could read. His intention held firm to give his Alma Mater a tower
higher than any university tower on record and containing a chime of bells
that periodically played the college song. The tower was naturally to bear
his name, which was also his dear mother's.

_A Suggestion Regarding Vacations_

Why wouldn't it be well for the country colleges to shorten their summer
vacations, and lengthen their winter ones? Then urban students would not,
for so long a period in summer, be put to their trumps to find out what to
do with themselves; and, what is more important, in winter both faculty
and students would have increased opportunity for metropolitan experience.
In the summer vacations, the cities are empty of music, drama, and most
else of what makes them distinctively worth while. Intellectually, the
country needs the city at least as much as, morally, the city needs the
country.

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Below is the first essay. It is perfectly genuine. Please send us some
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_Help Wanted._ From a young gentleman of education, leisure and energy,
who desires to devote a part of his time, in connection with scholars and
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Care of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW.

A few hundred persons of the kind whose help is sought by this
advertisement would have the salvation of the republic in their hands. But
somehow those who have the leisure generally lack the desire; and those
who have the desire generally lack the leisure.

_Simplified Spelling_

After receiving, in answer to the invitation in our first number, a few
bitter objections to simplified spelling, we have felt like apologizing
each time we approached the subject. Perhaps the best apology we can make
is that apparently the majority of our readers are interested in it.
Therefore we hope that the others will tolerate as equably as they can,
the devotion of a little space to it in the interest of the majority.
Perhaps the objectors may ultimately be able to settle the difficulty as
we and our house have settled another unconquerable nuisance--the
dandelions on our lawns--: we have concluded to like them.

Our recent correspondence regarding Simplified Spelling has developed a
few points which we submit to those who abominate it, those who favor it,
and those who, like the eminent school-superintendent we have already
quoted, and like ourselves for that matter, do both:

To a leading Professor of Greek:

I am more hopeful than you that the repetition of a consonant
beginning the second syllable of a dissyllable, to close the
preceding syllable, as in "differ", "fiddle", "gobble", etc.,
_wil_ "be generally accepted", especially in view of the fact that
it is _alreddy_ "generally accepted", and needs only to be
extended to a minority of words.

"Annutther" is not "a fair illustration". On the contrary, it is
an exception that I probably was very injudicious to call any
attention to; and the trouble with you scholars, I find all the
way thru, is that you permit those little exceptions to influence
you too much. If a good simplification is ever effected, it will
be by cutting Gordian knots, and you all of you seem absolutely
incapable of anything of the kind. I don't expect anyhow to make
much out of a man who will spell "peepl" "peopl". Imagine all this
said with a grin, not a frown!!

You wil never get back to "the old sounds" of the vowels, in God's
world.

As to the long sounds, I am going in for all I am worth on the
double vowels. I alreddy agree with the English Society on
"faather", "feel" and "scuul", and am going to do all I can for
_niit_, and for spredding the _oo_ in _floor_ and _door_ into
_snore_, _more_, _hole_, _poke_, etc. "Awl", "cow" and "go" are
spelt wel, and their spelling shoud be spred. These seem to be the
lines of least resistance. I find that they work first-rate in my
own riting.

You make enuf serious objections to diacritical marks, but my
serious objection to them is that they ar obstacles to lerners,
especially forreners.

From his answer:

All right; I catch the grin, and cheerfully grin back. The
business of a scholar (Emerson's "man thinking", Plato's [Greek:
philosophos]) is to take as long views as he can; in this case, to
look far beyond the possibilities of my life-time. The more you
people with the shorter views, as I venture to think them, agitate
for and practise each little partial solution, the more you help
on the threshing out which must go on for many years before we can
arrive at any general solution. So, more power to your elbow!

Meantime my own spelling will continue to be--like the
conventional spelling of the printers of today--a hodge-podge of
inconsistencies, quite indefensible on rational grounds, and
varying with circumstances. Of course the rational way to spell
_people_ is _piipl_, or _pipl_.

Which we think is an attempt to bolster up a lost cause.

From another reader:

Your closing sentence in the first number of THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW
states with a most distressing combination of vowels and
outlandish collocation of consonants that you would like to hear
from your readers on the subject.... Z is not a pretty letter, and
to see it so frequently usurping the place so long held by s is
far from gratifying to the eye....

Suppose you establish to your own satisfaction a method for
assigning sound values; how will you reach the differences in
vowel sounds that prevail in the United States? The New
Englander's mouthing of _a_ differs from that of the Northern New
Yorker, and both differ greatly from that of the
Southerner--indeed, in the different Southern States there is
variation.... At first I was interested in simplified spelling,
but the eccentricities developed by its advocates alienated me
long since, so I beg of you, drop it.

From our answer:

I delayed thanking you for your letter of the 29th until there
should be time for you to see the April-June number.

I hope you are feeling better now.

If you are not, I do not think I can do much to console you,
because when a man has been irritated into that position where the
alleged beauty of a letter counts in so serious a question, he is
probably beyond mortal help.

I have no desire "to reach the differences in vowel sounds that
prevail in the United States". There is not much difference among
cultivated people. Probably a fair standard would be the
conversation at the Century Club, where there are visitors from
Maine to California, and hardly any noticeable difference in
pronunciation.

There seems to be no disagreement among authorities that a
simplified spelling would save a great deal of time among
children....

Of course I have not been able to answer most of the letters I
have received on the subject. I single yours out because you have
had a fall from grace, and I feel guilty of having had something
to do with it, by presenting stronger meat than was necessary, in
our January number. I have fought on the Executive Committee of
the Spelling Board against publishing anything of the English
S.S.S.'s proposed improvements, for fear of arousing such
prejudice as yours; and yet in our first number, I was insensibly
led into, myself, publishing things that looked just as
outlandish.

As I said at the outset, I hope you feel better since seeing the
April-June number, and should be glad to know how you do feel.

From his reply:

Thank you very much for the courtesy of your letter of 9th April.
I was surprised to receive it, as I did not suppose that your
multifarious duties would permit you to notice my rather feeble
protest. I was somewhat amused that you should think my irritation
so extreme as to call for an effort to console me. I am sure I
appreciate your attempt to do so. But really, I was not so hard
hit as you thought, because I do not expect in my day (I am no
longer a young man) to see the champions of "simplified spelling"
(some of it seems to me the reverse of "simplified") gain such
headway as to materially mar my pleasure in the printed page, for
I do not believe you will allow the atrocities of the last few
pages of your first number to creep into the delightful essays
which render THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW such pleasant and profitable
reading....

I do not think any great respect is due the opinion of those who
think that a simplified spelling would save a great deal of time
among children, for it also seems to have its rules which will
present as much difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of
our present system....

Why _thru_? U does not always have the sound of double _o_--very
rarely in fact. Why not _throo_--if the aim is to make the written
sign correspond to the sound. Thru suggests _huh_.

From our answer:

Regarding "thru", you justly say that _u_ does not always have the
sound of _oo_. The only sound of _oo_ worthy of respect, with
which I have an acquaintance, is in "door" and "floor". The idea
of using it to represent a _u_ sound is perhaps the culminating
absurdity of our spelling.

Your statement that simplified spelling "seems to have its rules
which will present as much difficulty to memorize as do the
peculiarities of our present system" overlooks the advantage that
writing with a phonetic alphabet, like those of Europe, has over
writing with purely conventional characters, as in China. Now
English writing is probably the least phonetic in Europe.
Simplifying it in any of the well-known proposed methods would be
making it more phonetic, and consequently easier. At present it is
a mass of contradictions, and the rules that can be extracted from
it are overburdened with exceptions. Simplification will decrease
both the exceptions and the rules themselves. There are now
several ways of representing each of many sounds, and therefore
several "rules" to be learned for each of such sounds.
Simplification will tend to reduce those rules to one for each
sound, and so far as it succeeds, will _not_ "present as much
difficulty to memorize as do the peculiarities of our present
system."

All the degrees of reformed spelling now in use are professedly but
transitional. They may gradually advance into a respectable degree of
consistency, but we expect that to be reached quicker by a coherent
survival among the warring elements proposed by the S.S.S., the S.S.B. and
the better individual reformers. Probably there is already more agreement
than disagreement among these elements.

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.

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