Jason was the son of an ordinary Connecticut farmer, of the usual associations, and with no other pretension to education than such as was obtained in a common school, or any reading which did not include the Scriptures, some half-dozen volumes of sermons and polemical works, all the latter of which were vigorously as well as narrowly one-sided, and a few books that had been expressly written to praise New England, and to undervalue all the rest of the earth. As the family knew nothing of the world beyond the limits of its own township, and an occasional visit to Hartford, on what is called “election-day,” Jason's early life was necessarily of the most contracted experience. His English, as a matter of course, was just that of his neighbourhood and class of life; which was far from being either very elegant or very Doric. But on this rustic, provincial, or rather, hamlet foundation, Jason had reared a superstructure of New Haven finish and proportions. As he kept school before he went to college, while he was in college, and after he left college, the whole energies of his nature became strangely directed to just such reforms of language as would be apt to strike the imagination of a pedagogue of his calibre. In the first place, he had brought from home with him a great number of sounds that were decidedly vulgar and vicious, and with these in full existence in himself, he had commenced his system of reform on other people. As is common with all tyros, he fancied a very little knowledge sufficient authority for very great theories. His first step was to improve the language, by adapting sound to spelling and he insisted on calling angel, _an_-gel, because a-n spelt an; chamber, _cham_-ber, for the same reason; and so on through a long catalogue of similarly constructed words. “English,” he did not pronounce as “__lish” but as “_Eng_lish,” for instance; and “nothing” (anglicè _nuth_ing), as _noth_-ing; or, perhaps, it were better to say “_naw_thin'.” While Jason showed himself so much of a purist with these and many other words, he was guilty of some of the grossest possible mistakes, that were directly in opposition to his own theory. Thus, while he affectedly pronounced “none,” (nun,) as “known,” he did not scruple to call “stone,” “stun,” and “home,” “hum.” The idea of pronouncing “clerk,” as it should be, or “clark,” greatly shocked him, as it did to call “hearth,” “h'arth;” though he did not hesitate to call this good earth of ours, the “'arth.” “Been,” he pronounced “ben,” of course, and “roof,” he called “ruff,” in spite of all his purism.