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Updated: May 11, 2025
An' we learned to purnounce a heap mo' words than either one of us has ever needed to know, though there has been times, sech ez when my wife's mother took the phthisic an' I had the asthma, thet I was obligated to write to the doctor about it, thet I was thankful for my experience in the blue-back speller. Them was our brag-words, phthisic and asthma was.
These terms were finally merged into "Shiny," and to that name he answered good-naturedly during the balance of his public school days. "Shiny" was considered without question to be the best speller, the best reader, the best penman in a word, the best scholar, in the class.
Washington as a slave for a short time; but how true this is, I cannot say. From Mr. Hobby, George learned to spell easy words, and perhaps to write a little; but, although he afterward became a very careful and good penman, he was a poor speller as long as he lived. When George was about eleven years old his father died. We do not know what his father's intentions had been regarding him.
On Indian Creek the Yorks were farmers, but at his home Uriah started one of the few schools then in Fentress county. His school began after crops were laid by and ran for three months. He used but two text books the "blue-backed speller" and the Bible.
My boy then learned, for the first time, that there was such a book as the "Arabian Nights;" one of the other boys told stories out of it, and he inferred that the sole copy in existence belonged to this boy. He knew that they all had school-books alike, but it did not occur to him that a book which was not a Reader or a Speller was ever duplicated.
How the smart one on the fatal day sought to "press the button" and finding it gone, lost his wits completely and failed ignominiously? Many of us when we have lost a sustaining button, have we not felt as ridiculously helpless and wit-benumbed as the smart speller?
But Sarah meant to win the prize by fair means or foul. One Friday morning before school-time, the boys and girls were talking about the relative merits of the two spellers, Joanna maintaining that Sarah was the better, and others that Jack could spell better than Sarah. "Oh!" said Sarah Weathervane, "Jack is the best speller in school.
Parents of three children know what the hours of, say, seven to nine mean, at home; nor does work stop at nine. It is one mad whirl to get the family ears washed and teeth cleaned, and "Chew your mush!" and "Wipe your mouth!" and "Where's your speller?" and "Jim, come back here and put on your rubbers!" Breakfast dishes to clear up; baby to bathe, dress, feed. Count the laundry.
"What's that?" said Pa, looking at me curiously. "Ever ketch her in a mistake?" "Yes, Sir." "Bring the book." I ran and fetched a well-thumbed book from the sewing machine and turned to the definitions of familiar foreign words. "There," said I, spreading the speller flat on the table and pointing with my finger. "French word for 'Mister. Teacher called it 'Monshure, just as they all do.
McGuffey had a Speller, too. It began with simple words in common use, like a-b ab, and e-b eb, and i-b, ib, proceeding by gradual, if not by easy stages to honorificatudinibility and disproportionableness, with a department at the back devoted to twisters like phthisic, and mullein-stalk, and diphtheria, and gneiss.
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