THE SPELLING MATCH
THE evening of the Annual Spelling Match was one of those when the whole
Emerson-Morton family down to Dicky went to the Amphitheatre. Usually
Mary or one of the older members of the family stayed at home with the
children. On this occasion, however, Mr. Emerson had announced that he
intended to take part in the match so everybody was eager to be present
to encourage him.
The Amphitheatre was fuller than they had seen it yet when they reached
it and made their way as far forward as possible so that they might hear
all that was said.
"Evidently this is popular," remarked Mr. Emerson to his daughter as he
took his seat next to her, placing himself at the end of the bench so
that he could get into the aisle quickly when the time came. There
seemed to be an unusual spirit of gayety in the audience, they thought,
for many people were being playfully urged by their friends to go up on
to the stage, and others who had made up their minds to go were being
coached by their companions who were giving out words from the C.L.S.C.
books for them to practice on.
A short flight of steps had been arranged at the front of the platform
on which two rows of chairs were placed ready for the contestants. At
the back a large table was loaded with heavy dictionaries for the use of
the judges who were to decide any questions of doubt.
A burst of applause greeted the Director of the Institution as he walked
forward and introduced the announcer of words, a college president.
After giving a short history of the Annual Spelling Match, which dated
back to the early days of the Assembly, he announced that the contest of
the evening was to be between representatives of New York, Pennsylvania,
and Ohio on one side and the Rest of the World on the other.
Amid the laughter that followed the announcement Helen whispered to
Margaret who sat next to her--
"Why New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio?"
"They send more people here than any of the other states. You ought to
see them stand up on Old First Night! There are hordes of them."
The Director went on to state the rules that were to govern the
contestants. They must be over fifteen years old. They might ask to have
a word pronounced again but they could have only one chance to spell it.
A spelling was to be accepted as correct if it were confirmed by any of
the dictionaries on the stage--Worcester, Webster, the Standard, and the
Century. The judges were professors from the faculty of the Summer
Schools and their decision was to be final. No one who had taken a prize
in previous years might enter. Lastly, a ten dollar gold piece was to
add an extra inducement to enter the contest and to give an extra
pleasure to the winner.
"Now," he concluded, "will the gladiators come forward, stating as they
step on the platform on which side they are to fight."
There was a moment's pause until a courageous few advanced to the front.
The Director announced their partisanship. They were all, as it
happened, from New York, Pennsylvania, or Ohio and they sat down on the
chairs at the right of the audience.
The next detachment added two to their number and half a dozen to the
other side. Mr. Emerson was in the next group to go forward.
"There's my mother behind your grandfather," whispered Dorothy, who was
between the two Ethels. They saw a slender woman with a mass of
snow-white hair piled above a fresh face.
"It's the lady who took care of Dicky and me the day of the fire," cried
Ethel Blue.
Bursts of applause greeted people who were well known. The editor of a
newspaper in a near-by town was one of these favored ones and a teacher
of stenography was another. Between the detachments the Director cheered
on the laggards with humorous remarks, and after each joke there was
sure to be heard from one part of the Amphitheatre or another a loudly
whispered "You go" followed by a shrinking, "Oh, no, you go!"
At last all the Tri-state chairs were filled while there remained two
vacant places on the side of the Rest of the World.
"It looks as if the Rest of the World was afraid to stand up against New
York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio," exclaimed the Director. "This can't be
true!"
There was another pause and then two women rose at the same time. They
were received by a hearty round of clapping.
"Do you see who it is? Roger, Roger, do you see?" cried Helen, leaning
across Margaret to touch her brother's knee.
"Good for her. Isn't she the spunky mother!" answered Roger, while at
the same moment Margaret and James were exclaiming, "Why, there's our
mother, too, going up with yours!"
So the two brave little ladies took the last two seats for the defence
of the Rest of the World and the announcer began to give out the words
to the waiting fifty.
It took only a minute to bring trouble, for a Tri-state woman went down
on "typographical." Others followed in rapid succession, every failure
being as heartily applauded as every success. By the time that a girl
misspelled "ebullitions" only seven representatives of the Rest of the
World were left. A Kentuckian who had overpowered some giants was beaten
by "centripetal"; Grandfather Emerson's omission of a "p" in
"handicapped," Mrs. Morton's desperate but unavailing struggle with the
"l's" in "unparalleled," and Mrs. Hancock's insertion of an undesirable
"e" in "judgment" reduced the ranks of both sides to a brave pair of
Tri-states faced by a solitary cosmopolitan.
"It's Mother, it's Mother," whispered Dorothy, clapping frantically,
while the two Ethels told everybody near them, "It's Dorothy's mother.
Isn't she splendid!"
"Correlation" and "exhilaration" were the bombs whose explosion swept
away the last of the Tri-state forces, and Dorothy's mother stood alone,
the winner of the prize.
"That was Dorothy's mother who took the prize," repeated Ethel Brown in
high spirits to her grandmother as she took her arm to pilot her home.
"Dorothy's mother! Why, that is the Mrs. Smith who is my embroidery
teacher at the art store."
"It is! How lovely for you to know Dorothy's mother. Ethel, Granny knows
Dorothy's mother. She teaches her embroidery," called Ethel to her
cousin.
"Don't you know Dorothy said her mother was teaching embroidery in an
art store in Illinois last winter? Oh, I almost want to learn from her
myself."
"Stick to your stenciling, child," said Mrs. Morton. "Does Dorothy
embroider?"
"We don't know; we'll ask her," cried the two girls in chorus, and Ethel
Brown added; "she makes ten kinds of baskets, and this year she's doing
stenciling in my class, and her mother says that if she does it as well
as she did the baskets, she can study next year at the Arts and Crafts
Shops with the grown people."
"She must have inherited her mother's clever fingers," commented Mrs.
Morton.
Roger and Helen, who had been walking with James and Margaret, stopped
at their house and sat on the porch to round out this privileged evening
until ten o'clock. The moonlight shone brilliantly on the lake and at
its upper end, two or three miles away, the lights of Mayville twinkled
through the trees. Boats and canoes were drawing in toward the shore,
for Chautauqua custom demands that every one be at home by ten o'clock,
and that quiet reign so that the people who have studying to do or are
obliged to rise early for their classes and so must go to bed early may
not be disturbed.
Some of the boats landed at the dock just below the Hancocks' house and
their occupants stepped on the wet planks with happy shrieks of
laughter; others went on to the lower dock in front of the hotel.
"It always says in books that moonlight is romantic," said Roger. "I
don't see where the romance comes in; it's just easier to see your way
round."
There were cries of protest from the two girls.
"Girls always howl when you say a thing like that," went on Roger, "as
if a fellow was a hard-hearted fool, but I'd like to have you tell me
where there is any romance in real life--any outside of books, I mean."
He stared challengingly at James as if he expected him either to
support him or to contradict him, but James was a slow thinker and said
nothing. Helen rushed in breathlessly.
"It's just the way you put things together. If you want to look at it
that way there are things happening all the time that would look
romantic in a story."
"What, I'd like to know," demanded Roger. "Tell just one thing."
"Why--why--" Helen hesitated, trying to put her feelings into words;
"why, take to-night when Grandmother found out that it was Dorothy's
mother she had been taking embroidery lessons from. Somehow that seems
to me romantic--to know one person and to know another person and then
to find that they are relations."
Helen ended rather lamely, for Roger was shouting with laughter.
"That sounds mighty commonplace to me," he roared.
"It would sound all right if a writer worked it up in a book." James
suddenly came to Helen's rescue to her great gratification. "We've got a
romance in our family," he went on.
"We have!" cried Margaret. "What is it?"
"Perhaps it wouldn't seem like one to Roger," went on James, "but it
always seemed to me it was romantic because it was different from the
way things happen every day, and there was a chance for a surprise in
it."
"I know what you mean," cried Margaret. "Great-uncle George."
"Yes," acknowledged James. "He was our father's uncle and he was a young
man at the time of the Civil War. Fathers were sterner then than they
are now and Uncle George's father--Dad's grandfather--insisted that he
should go into a certain kind of business that he didn't like. They had
some fierce quarrels and Uncle George ran off to the war and they never
heard from him again."
"Didn't he ever write home?"
"They never got any letter from him," said Margaret. "His mother always
blamed herself that she didn't write to him over and over again, even if
she didn't get any answer, so that he would know that somebody kept on
loving him and looking for him to come back. But Great-grandfather
forbade her to, and I guess she must have been meeker than women are
now, just as Great-grandfather was stricter."
"Father says," went on James, "that all through his boyhood he used to
hope that his uncle would turn up, perhaps awfully rich or perhaps with
adventures to tell about. Now I call that romantic, don't you, old man?"
ended James defiantly.
"Seems to me it would have been if he had turned up, but he didn't,"
retorted Roger, determined not to yield.
"We have a disappearance story in our family, too," said Helen. "I'd
forgotten it. It's nearer than yours; it's our own aunt. Don't you
remember, Roger? Mother told us about it, once."
"That's so; so we have. Now that _is_ romantic," asserted Roger.
"Let's hear it and see if it beats ours," said James.
"It was our Aunt Louise, Father's and Uncle Richard's sister. She was
older than they. She fell in love with a man her father didn't like."
"Ho," grunted James; "that's why you think your story is
romantic--because there's some love in it."
"It does make it more romantic, of course," declared Margaret, going
over to the other side.
"He was a musician and Grandfather Morton didn't think music was a man's
business. People used to be funny about things like that you know."
"That was because musicians and painters used to go round with long hair
looking like jays." So James summed up the causes of the previous
generation's dislike of the masters of the arts.
"I don't know whether Aunt Louise's musician was long on hair or not,
but he was short on cash all right," Roger took up the story.
"Grandfather said he couldn't support a wife and Aunt Louise said she'd
take the chance, and so they ran away."
"She had more sand than sense, seems to me--if you'll excuse my
commenting on your aunt," said James.
"She had plenty of sand. She must have found out pretty soon that
Grandfather was right, but she wouldn't ask for help or come home again,
and after a while they didn't hear from her any more and now nobody
knows where she is."
"I'm like your father, James," said Helen; "I always feel that some time
she may turn up and tell us her adventures."
"She must have been very brave and very loyal," murmured Margaret. "What
did she look like? Was she pretty?"
"I haven't any idea. Mother never saw her. She left home before Mother
and Father were married."
"Father spoke to me about her once," said Roger gravely.
"Did he really?" cried Helen. "Mother told me he hadn't mentioned her
for years, it hurt him so to lose her."
"He told me she was the finest girl he ever knew except Mother, and he
thought Grandfather made a mistake in not helping the fellow along and
then letting Aunt Louise marry him. You see he sort of drove her into it
by opposing her."
"Wouldn't it be great if both our relatives should turn up," cried
Helen. "I suppose your uncle is too old now, even if he's alive, but our
aunt really may."
"Then Roger'll have to admit that there's romance in real life."
"There are the chimes; we must go," said Roger as "Annie Laurie" pealed
out on the fresh evening air, and the Morton brother and sister said
"Good-night" to the Hancock sister and brother and went down the path to
their own cottage where Roger left Helen and then went on up the hill to
his room in the Hall of Pedagogy.