Note 13 — GUESSES AT TRUTH.

We have not thought it worth while to adhere in our quotations to the somewhat affected manner of spelling which the brothers Hare have adopted. For instance, asked and wished are spelt askt and wisht: we have but one l in traveller, and the French word ragouts is rather oddly travestied into ragoos. The substitution of t for ed in the participle of many verbs, is the most systematic alteration attempted. Now the d and the t, as is very well known, slide into one another by such fine gradations that it is impossible to determine, in many cases, which of these two letters most accurately represents the pronunciation in general use. As the termination ed is what is understood by grammarians as the regular form, and is, moreover, in possession of the ground, it seems very futile to take any pains to alter it. In the instances we have already mentioned, wisht for wished, askt for asked, the new orthography is no nearer to the actual daily pronunciation of the words than the old and received mode of spelling. We do not pronounce wished and asked as we do the word waft. Give the full sound of the t in these words, and a pronunciation is introduced quite as novel as the mode of spelling.