to learn to spell. "'Know
Webster's Elementary' came down from Heaven," would be the backwoods
version of the 'Greek saying but that, unfortunately for the Greeks,
their fame has not reached so far. It often happens that the pupil does
not know the meaning of a single word in the lesson. This is of no
consequence. What do you want to know the meaning of a word for? Words
were made to be spelled, and men were probably created that they might
spell them. Hence the necessity for sending a pupil through the
spelling-book five times before you allow him to begin to read, or
indeed to do anything else. Hence the necessity for those long
spelling-classes at the close of each forenoon and afternoon session of
the school, to stand at the head of which is the cherished ambition of
every scholar. Hence, too, the necessity for devoting the whole of the
afternoon session of each Friday to a "spelling-match." In fact,
spelling is the "national game" in Hoopole County. Baseball and croquet
matches are as unknown as Olympian chariot-races. Spelling and
shucking[10] are the only public competitions.

So the fatal spelling-school had to be appointed for the Wednesday of
the second week of the session, just when Ralph felt himself master of
the situation. Not that he was without his annoyances. One of Ralph's
troubles in the week before the spelling-school was that he was loved.
The other that he was hated. And while the time between the appointing
of the spelling tournament and the actual occurrence of that remarkable
event is engaged in elapsing, let me narrate two incidents that made it
for Ralph a trying time.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: In naming the several parts of the Indian corn and the
dishes made from it, the English language was put to many shifts. Such
words as _tassel_ and _silk_ were poetically applied to the blossoms;
_stalk_, _blade_, and _ear_ were borrowed from other sorts of corn, and
the Indian tongues were forced to pay tribute to name the dishes
borrowed from the savages. From them we have _hominy_, _pone_, _supawn_,
and _succotash_. For other nouns words were borrowed from English
provincial dialects. _Shuck_ is one of these. On the northern belt,
shucks are the outer covering of nuts; in the middle and southern
regions the word is applied to what in New England is called the husks
of the corn. _Shuck_, however, is much more widely used than _husk_ in
colloquial speech--the farmers in more than half of the United