What Is Man? and Other Essays

pupils of their mathematical rank and standing, yet they all failed—by a hair—through one trifling mistake or another. Some searching questions were asked, when it turned out that these lads were as glib as parrots with the “rules,” but could not reason out a single rule or explain the principle underlying it. Their memories had been stocked, but not their understandings. It was a case of brickbat culture, pure and simple. There are several curious “compositions” in the little book, and we must make room for one. It is full of naïveté, brutal truth, and unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy’s composition I think I have ever seen: ON GIRLS Girls are very stuck up and dignefied in their maner and be have your. They think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of guns. They stay at home all the time and go to church on Sunday. They are al-ways sick. They are always funy and making fun of boy’s hands and they say how dirty. They cant play marbels. I pity them poor things. They make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. I dont beleave they ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out every nite and say oh ant the moon lovely. Thir is one thing I have not told and that is they al-ways now their lessons bettern boys. From Mr. Edward Channing’s recent article in _Science_: The marked difference between the books now being produced by French, English, and American travelers, on the one hand, and German explorers, on the other, is too great to escape attention. That difference is due entirely to the fact that in school and university the German is taught, in the first place to see, and in the second place to understand what he does see. A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET (This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last writing done by Mark Twain on any impersonal subject.) I have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling toward Simplified Spelling, from the beginning of the movement three years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that. It seemed to me to merely propose to substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of patching and plugging poor old dental relics with cement and gold and porcelain paste; what was really wanted was a new set of teeth. That is to say, a new _alphabet_. The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn’t know how to spell, and can’t be taught. In this it is like all other alphabets except one—the phonographic. That is the only competent alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in our language. That admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired alphabet, can be learned in an hour or two. In a week the student can learn to write it with some little facility, and to read it with considerable ease. I know, for I saw it tried in a public school in Nevada forty-five years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that it has remained in my memory ever since. I wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed) character. I mean _simply _the alphabet; simply the consonants and the vowels—I don’t mean any _reductions _or abbreviations of them, such as the shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and speed. No, I would _spell every word out._ I will insert the alphabet here as I find it in Burnz’s Phonic Shorthand. (Figure 1) It is arranged__ on the basis of Isaac Pitman’s _Phonography_. Isaac Pitman was the originator and father of scientific phonography. It is used throughout the globe. It was a memorable invention. He made it public seventy-three years ago. The firm of Isaac Pitman & Sons, New York, still exists, and they continue the master’s work. What should we gain? First of all, we could spell _definitely_—and correctly—any word you please, just by the _sound _of it. We can’t do that with our present alphabet. For instance, take a simple, every-day word _phthisis_. If we tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it TYSIS, and be laughed at by every educated person. Secondly, we should gain in _reduction of labor_ in writing. Simplified Spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several hundred words, but the new spelling must be _learned_. You can’t spell them by the sound; you must get them out of the book. But even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language, the phonographic alphabet would still beat the Simplified Speller “hands down” in the important matter of economy of labor. I will illustrate: PRESENT FORM: through, laugh, highland. SIMPLIFIED FORM: thru, laff, hyland. PHONOGRAPHIC FORM: (Figure 2) To write the word “through,” the pen has to make twenty-one strokes. To write the word “thru,” the pen has to make twelve strokes—a good saving. To write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only _three _strokes. To write the word “laugh,” the pen has to make _fourteen _strokes. To write “laff,” the pen has to make the _same number_ of strokes—no labor is saved to the penman. To write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only _three _strokes. To write the word “highland,” the pen has to make twenty-two strokes. To write “hyland,” the pen has to make eighteen strokes. To write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only FIVE strokes. (Figure 3) To write the words “phonographic alphabet,” the pen has to make fifty-three strokes. To write “fonografic alfabet,” the pen has to make fifty strokes. To the penman, the saving in labor is insignificant. To write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make only _seventeen _strokes. Without the vowels, only _thirteen _strokes. (Figure 4) The vowels are hardly necessary, this time. We make five pen-strokes in writing an m. Thus: (Figure 5) a stroke down; a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final stroke down. Total, five. The phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m with a single stroke—a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home drunk and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody that goes along will see him and say, Alas! When our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located, it has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. But never mind about the connecting strokes—let them go. Without counting them, the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty pen-strokes for their construction—about three pen-strokes per letter. It is _three times the number_ required by the phonographic alphabet. It requires but _one _stroke for each letter. My writing-gait is—well, I don’t know what it is, but I will time myself and see. Result: it is twenty-four words per minute. I don’t mean composing; I mean _copying_. There isn’t any definite composing-gait. Very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour—say 1,500. If I could use the phonographic character with facility I could do the 1,500 in twenty minutes. I could do nine hours’ copying in three hours; I could do three years’ copying in one year. Also, if I had a typewriting machine with the phonographic alphabet on it—oh, the miracles I could do! I am not pretending to write that character well. I have never had a lesson, and I am copying the letters from the book. But I can accomplish my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a good and clear idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could discard our present alphabet and put this better one in its place—using it in books, newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen. (Figure 6)—_Man Dog Horse_. I think it is graceful and would look comely in print. And consider—once more, I beg—what a labor-saver it is! Ten pen-strokes with the one system to convey those three words above, and thirty-three by the other! (Figure 7) I mean, in SOME ways, not in all. I suppose I might go so far as to say in most ways, and be within the facts, but never mind; let it go at _some_. One of the ways in which it exercises this birthright is—as I think—continuing to use our laughable alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a rational one at hand, to be had for the taking. It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer’s rotten spelling—if I may be allowed to use so frank a term as that—and it will take five hundred more to get our exasperating new Simplified Corruptions accepted and running smoothly. And we sha’n’t be any better off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have the privilege the Simplifiers are exercising now: _anybody _can change the spelling that wants to. _But you can’t change the phonographic spelling; there isn’t any way._ It will always follow the SOUND. If you want to change the spelling, you have to change the sound first. Mind, I myself am a Simplified Speller; I belong to that unhappy guild that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old alphabet by reducing his whiskey. Well, it will improve him. When they get through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will be only HALF drunk. Above that condition their system can never lift him. There is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but to take away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with Pitman’s wholesome and undiseased alphabet. One great drawback to Simplified Spelling is, that in print a simplified word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a whole squadron of the Simplified together the spectacle is very nearly unendurable. The da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled to the bezair asspekt of the Simplified Kombynashuns, but—if I may be allowed the expression—is it worth the wasted time? (Figure 8) To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed offends the eye, and also takes the _expression _out of the words. La on, Makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf! It doesn’t thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have sucked the thrill all out of it. But a written character with which we are _not acquainted_ does not offend us—Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and the others—they have an interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is true of hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. The mystery hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can’t come across a printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we could read it. Very well, what I am offering for acceptance and adoption is not shorthand, but longhand, written with the _Shorthand Alphabet Unreduced_. You can write three times as many words in a minute with it as you can write with our alphabet. And so, in a way, it _is _properly a shorthand. It has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting look. I will write something in it, in my rude and untaught way: (Figure 9) Even when _I_ do it it comes out prettier than it does in Simplified Spelling. Yes, and in the Simplified it costs one hundred and twenty-three pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it costs only twenty-nine. (Figure 9) is probably (Figure 10). Let us hope so, anyway. AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY I This line of hieroglyphs was for fourteen years the despair of all the scholars who labored over the mysteries of the Rosetta stone: (Figure 1) After five years of study Champollion translated it thus: Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all the