Page 59 - Poetry-Books

The Dialect Tale

We have had it in Irish and Dutch,
From the east, from the north, from the south;
The spelling is generally such
As to twist the most classical mouth.
We have meekly submitted for long,
We have patiently tried to pronounce
This language of story and song,
But there comes to each pound a last ounce.

O brothers, we pray and beseech,
If you have a “short story” to tell,
Put it into your everyday speech,
And spell as the spelling-books spell!
If you find it devoid of all wit,
If it lacketh both humor and sense,
If it aimeth and faileth to hit,
Spare, spare us the final offense!

Has the reader no rights of his own?
Must he read his once-loved magazines
In language which makes him to groan
With struggles to guess what it means,
While, haunted by similar tales,
He tries to compare and collate,
Till overtaxed memory fails,
And he yields to bewildering fate?

“Take care of the sense,” we are told,
“And the sounds will take care of themselves.”
It is time to return to the fold,
O fillers of library shelves!
If man is a savage at heart,
Conventions may suddenly fail,
And an auto da fe in the mart
Be the end of the dialect tale!

— Margaret Vandegrift (Century Magazine, 1889)

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