civilized people, and illiterates and
their language do not come under this purview.

The movement inaugurated by Professor March and his associates
contemplates the displacement of the _k_ or guttural sound from _know_
and _knowledge_, both in writing and speaking. They say, in effect, if
not in so many words, that because there is no guttural sound in the
pronunciation, therefore there is none in the word. Some people say
_again_, pronouncing the word as it is spelled: others say _agen_, as, I
believe, Professor March does. These two classes mean the same thing,
but it is quite evident that they do not say the same thing. _Ai_ cannot
be the equivalent of _e_. To so hold would be to make "confusion worse
confounded" in English orthography. By one class of literary people
_neither_ is pronounced as though the _e_ were absent, and by another
class as though the _i_ were not present. No one, I think, will contend
for the identity, or even equivalence, of _i_ and _e_. If not identical
or equivalent, they must be different. If _ai_ is different from _e_,
then _again_ and _agen_ cannot be the same word, and if _i_ and _e_ are
neither identical nor equivalent, _nither_ and _neether_ are two
different words. The logic of the "reformers" would bring the utmost
confusion into the language. It would make two separate words identical
in significance. It would make into one word with four different
meanings the four words _right, rite, write, wright._ The words _signet_
and _signature_ are formed from the stem _sign_, and yet the stem when
standing alone has a different vocalization from what it has when used
in the derivative words. By the logic of the "reformers" the word _sign_
when used alone is not the same as the same letters, arranged in the
same order, when used in _signature, signet, resignation_ and the like.
The word is changed, but the original significance remains. When a
person responds, even in writing, "It is me," grammarians say he is
incorrect--that he ought to say "I." But he means the person and thing
he would mean if he said "I." He simply spells "I" in a different way.
Is he not just as correct as he who writes _no_ when he means _know_? or
he who writes _filosofer_ when he means _philosopher_?

But Professor March dogmatically says that "fonetic spelling does not
mean that every one is to write as he pronounces or as he thinks he
pronounces. There ar all sorts of people. We must hav something else
written t