SPELLING BEE.
Not long ago the excitement about Spelling Bees was very great. Both publicly and privately these entertainments were held for a very considerable period; indeed, none of us felt sure on leaving our homes whether we should not be called upon before our return to spell no end of hard-sounding words that, hitherto, we had scarcely heard of or seen. Consequently, the dictionaries were all in demand, and young people, instead of giving all their time to light literature, might have been seen privately hunting up such words as Phthisical, Æsthetics, Dithyrambic, Isosceles, and others equally difficult, in order that they might not be disgraced as bad spellers. Now the rage has subsided, though no doubt the good produced by the Spelling Bees is still to be felt. As a Round Game, the Spelling Bee is conducted much the same as "The Schoolmaster," elsewhere described. The company take their places as if in class, going up or down as they acquit themselves creditably in the estimation of their master. The words must of course be made difficult or easy, to suit the capacities of the spellers. There would be no fun in exposing to general ridicule the ignorance of a boy or girl whom illness may have made more backward in knowledge than his or her schoolfellows.