"I have a short wait here," so writes a girl from the Welsh border. "This letter is the last I shall write on English soil, and I want it to be to you. In spite of good resolutions, I have cried without ceasing since I left —— Not even the evident amusement of a small boy, my vis-a-vie" (spelling is not a strong point with this writer) "could dry up those tears. Dignity doesn't help one to forget an aching heart. I must fly now to see to my luggage."
The heart in a girl like that is balanced by the head, and the same thing is true of the girl-writer of the next letter-extract:
"I look often at his picture upon my table, and wonder why it is there. I am so exquisitely happy, and yet so keenly aware of my own shortcomings. This great new thing that has come into my life makes me feel my own unworthiness. Tell me of all my misspellings, please."
This Great New Thing
The misspellings of the average girl-sentimentalist are legion; in fact, I have heard a schoolmistress say—the speech having been addressed by her to a younger schoolmistress—"Put down sentimentality; it leads to misspelling."
From this schoolmistress I have it that the girl who can spell "parallel," "ridiculous," and "predilection," is rarely an incurable sentimentalist.
My own experience has been that it is the sentimental girl who writes—and says—"rearly" and "warfted," and the following curiosities in spelling are culled from the—unpublished—works of girl-novelists:
"He had suffered the yolk of tyranny."
"She carried a little book, with guilt edges, a prayer-book."