never hope
to penetrate,---which are known only to the creator of all things
existent. But as in botany and zoology and physiology we may observe
and classify our observations, so we may observe a language, classify
our observations, and create an empirical science of word-formation.
Possibly in time it will become a science something more than empirical.

The laws we are able at this time to state with much definiteness are few
(doubling consonants, dropping silent e's, changing y's to i's, accenting
the penultimate and antepenultimate syllables, lengthening and shortening
vowels). In addition we may classify exceptions, for the sole purpose of
aiding the memory.

Ignorance of these principles and classifications, and knowledge of the
causes and sources of the irregularities, should be pronounced criminal
in a teacher; and failure to teach them, more than criminal in a
spelling-book. It is true that most spelling-books do give them in one
form or another, but invariably without due emphasis or special drill,
a lack which renders them worthless. Pupils and students should be
drilled upon them till they are as familiar as the multiplication table.

We know how most persons stumble over the pronunciation of names in the
Bible and in classic authors. They are equally nonplussed when called
upon to write words with which they are no more familiar. They cannot
even pronounce simple English names like _Cody,_ which they call
"Coddy," in analogy with _body,_ because they do not know that in a word
of two syllables a single vowel followed by a single consonant is
regularly long when accented. At the same time they will spell the word
in all kinds of queer ways, which are in analogy only with exceptions,
not with regular formations. Unless a person knows what the regular
principles are, he cannot know how a word should regularly be spelled.
A strange word is spelled quite regularly nine times out of ten, and if
one does not know exactly how to spell a word, it is much more to his
credit to spell it in a regular way than in an irregular way.

The truth is, the only possible key we can have to those thousands of
strange words and proper names which we meet only once or twice in a
lifetime, is the system of principles formulated by philologists,
if for no other reason, we should master it that we may come as near as
possible to spelling proper names correctly.

CHAPTER I.

LETTERS AND SOUNDS.

We must begin our st