Somebody, in one of the newspapers, has been telling a story of a schoolmistress, who had a hopeful boy-pupil, whose intelligence was scarcely "fair to middling," if one may judge from one of his "exercises" in spelling. "I got him," said the schoolmarm, "clean through the alphabet, and he would point out any letter, and call it by its right name. One bright Monday morning I put him, when he was sufficiently advanced, into words of two syllables; but I was obliged to tell him some fifty times what was the nature of a syllable; and after all, his brain was opaque as a rock. In order to interest him, however, I said to him:
"Do you love pies?"
"Yes, marm, I guess I do!"
"Well, then, 'apple' and 'pie,' when put together, spell 'apple-pie,' don't they?"
"Yes, marm."
"By the same rule, 'la' and 'dy,' spell 'lady?' You understand that, don't you?"
"Very well. Now, what do 'mince' and 'pie' spell?"
"I know!—Mince-Pie!"
"That's right: well, now what do 'pumpkin' and 'pie' spell? Speak up."
"I know that: that's pumpkin-pie!"