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?