"
"And yours."
"No!"
"I thought I should find you waiting here to-night, so I took the
trouble to copy out the passage. Read it."
I snatched the paper. Soames's handwriting was characteristically
dim. It and the noisome spelling and my excitement made me all the
slower to grasp what T. K. Nupton was driving at.
The document lies before me at this moment. Strange that the
words I here copy out for you were copied out for me by poor Soames
just eighty-two years hence!
From page 234 of "Inglish Littracher 1890-1900" bi T. K. Nupton,
publishd bi th Stait, 1992.
Fr egzarmpl, a riter ov th time, naimed Max Beerbohm, hoo woz
stil alive in th twentith senchri, rote a stauri in wich e pautraid an
immajnari karrakter kauld "Enoch Soames"--a thurd-rait poit hoo beleevz
imself a grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th Devvl in auder ter no wot
posterriti thinx ov im! It iz a sumwot labud sattire, but not without vallu
az showing hou seriusli the yung men ov th aiteen-ninetiz took
themselvz. Nou that th littreri profeshn haz bin auganized az a departmnt
of publik servis, our riters hav found their levvl an hav lernt ter doo their
duti without thort ov th morro. "Th laibrer iz werthi ov hiz hire" an that
iz aul. Thank hevvn we hav no Enoch Soameses amung us to-dai!
I found that by murmuring the words aloud (a device which I
commend to my reader) I was able to master them little by little.
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