"You don't like frate, suh?" he said, whipping out his pencil, and quickly writing on his list. "Bless yore heart, then we'll just make it frait. How does that hit yore fancy?" I thanked him for his amiability, but my fancy was as little hit by frait as it had been by frate; and it was still less hit when he came to me with his customary enthusiasm some twenty-five minutes after breakfast, to show me forty-three more words that he had simplified since rising from table. Still keeping all thoughts to myself, I read:-- Earth and dearth to irth and dirth, like mirth. Also worth to wirth. Pheasants whirr. Cats should pirr. I passed the list back with I know not what commendations of his rapidity. He retired with it to the rear platform, where sat Miss Appleby; and almost immediately I heard egregious peals of laughter coming from them both. This, for some reason, kindled in me such annoyance that I put my head out of the door, and cried loudly to them: "Do you intend to make flirt flurt, or hurt hirt? And how about squirt?" And I shut the door sharp upon my words before they could make answer to me. But still, even through the closed door and thick plate-glass windows, their shameless merriment reached me, and seemed, if anything, louder than ever. The outlook for the Higher Spelling was scarce a bright one, I thought, if the rest of my colleagues, whom I had yet to meet, should approach their solemn responsibilities in anything of the spirit shown by Professor Willows and Miss Appleby. His facile adoption of a new spelling, and equally facile relinquishment of it, gave but poor evidence of any deep thought on this matter; and to see him through the plate-glass as he talked to her on the rear platform, no one would easily be persuaded that spelling was the subject of their colloquy; and lastly, when he fetched a large shawl and hung it across the window outside, so that they were wholly screened from view, I found it no light effort to believe that it was to shield her from the cold blast, as he informed me. I sought (without great eagerness) the companionship of Kibosh. "Do you not fear," I asked him, "that we may not find ourselves able to reach an agreement as to the system by which this respelling should proceed?" "What would hinder it?" he inquired. "Of course, our present spelling is but a rag-bag of lawlessness," I replied, for I was growing fond of my description of it. "But great authors and newspapers have spread it round the globe. The sun never sets on English spelling. We must join the great English universities with us. We must join Canada, India, Australia. We must do it right." "England will have to follow us!" he declared. "If you'll watch England," I said, "I think you'll find she has her own ideas about that." "Then our publishers and writers will ignore England," he replied.