The Days of a Man 1906 



the efforts of Noah Webster lost in America the 

 superfluous u still retained in England. 



Expecting Yet the founder apparently expected the impos- 

 sible, assuming that obviously desirable changes could 

 be put through by the force of organization and by 

 the fiat of President Roosevelt, a member of the 

 board. Linguistic reforms, however, move slowly, and 

 Carnegie seemed later to lose his interest in simplified 

 spelling, as he provided no endowment for it. From 

 1917 on, therefore, official conferences and publica- 

 tions have been necessarily limited for lack of 

 funds, although individual effort is actively con- 

 tinued. 



While approving most of the changes recommended, 

 I for a time balked at "thru," because it does not 

 represent correct pronunciation and has little philo- 

 logical warrant. It also happened that before our 

 board had ever met, I made somewhere the casual 

 and rather stupid remark that "thru would make a 



Futile pollywog sick." This trifling joke got into the press, 

 and I had a call (in California) from a representative 

 of the New York Sun, who seemed friendly and tried 

 to get me to comment on his own statement that 

 Brander Matthews of Columbia was attempting to 

 assume leadership of the movement for simplified 

 spelling. At that time I had never met Matthews, 

 whom I have always held in high esteem, and when 

 my visitor asked directly if I didn't think the pro- 

 fessor was taking too much responsibility, I replied 

 offhand: "I don't know; it may be." He then 

 printed in the Sun a bit of verse supposititiously 

 based on my words and carrying the refrain, 



There is too much Brander Matthews 

 And not enough of me. 



C 192 3 



