d so I fall back upon the letter of it, and emerge upon the
platform for this last and final time because I am confronted by a lack
of bread-among Father Hawley's flock.

He made an introductory speech at an old-fashioned spelling-bee,
given at the Asylum Hill Church; a breezy, charming talk of which the
following is a sample:

I don't see any use in spelling a word right--and never did. I mean
I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of
spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook
all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing. I
have a correspondent whose letters are always a refreshment to me;
there is such a breezy, unfettered originality about his
orthography. He always spells "kow" with a large "K." Now that is
just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It
gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests
to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of a cow.

He took part in the contest, and in spite of his early reputation,
was spelled down on the word "chaldron," which he spelled
"cauldron," as he had been taught, while the dictionary used as
authority gave that form as second choice.

Another time that winter, Clemens read before the Monday Evening Club
a paper on "Universal Suffrage," which is still remembered by the
surviving members of that time. A paragraph or two will convey its
purport:

Our marvelous latter-day statesmanship has invented universal
suffrage. That is the finest feather in our cap. All that we
require of a voter is that he shall be forked, wear pantaloons
instead of petticoats, and bear a more or less humorous resemblance
to the reported image of God. He need not know anything whatever;
he may be wholly useless and a cumberer of the earth; he may even be
known to be a consummate scoundrel. No matter. While he can steer
clear of the penitentiary his vote is as weighty as the vote of a
president, a bishop, a college professor, a merchant prince. We
brag of our universal, unrestricted suffrage; but we are shams after
all, for we restrict when we come to the women.

The Monday Evening Club was an organization which included the best
minds of Hartford. Dr. Horace Bushnell, Prof. Calvin E. Stowe, and J.
Hammond Trumbull founded it back in the sixties, and it included such
men as Rev. Dr. Parker, Rev. Dr. B