It can convey any fact you need to convey; and it can pour out emotions
like a sewer. I beg you, I beseech you, to adopt our spelling, and print
all your despatches in it.
Now I wish to say just one entirely serious word:
I have reached a time of life, seventy years and a half, where none of
the concerns of this world have much interest for me personally. I think
I can speak dispassionately upon this matter, because in the little while
that I have got to remain here I can get along very well with these
old-fashioned forms, and I don't propose to make any trouble about it at
all. I shall soon be where they won't care how I spell so long as I keep
the Sabbath.
There are eighty-two millions of us people that use this orthography, and
it ought to be simplified in our behalf, but it is kept in its present
condition to satisfy one million people who like to have their literature
in the old form. That looks to me to be rather selfish, and we keep the
forms as they are while we have got one million people coming in here
from foreign countries every year and they have got to struggle with this
orthography of ours, and it keeps them back and damages their citizenship
for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn.
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