Take Your Latin Straight
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The school board, at its last session adopted the following rule: “The continental system of pronounciation shall be taught in the high schools of La Crosse, and no other allowed except by direction of board of education.” We are glad the rule has been adopted, as there is no doubt that the continental system is the best. We have been pained beyond measure, as no doubt all of the school board have, at hearing the scholars pronounce Latin by ’tother system. No longer ago than last Saturday, when we were in Mons. Anderson’s, a girl came in and asked for a pair of Latin corsets, by the Onalaska system of pronounciation. The clerk, not understanding, went and got a pair of those undershirts and drawers, complete in one number, with no tale to be continued. The girl blushed, the clerk did not understand, and we had to explain by the continental system, and the girl got her corsets, but suppose there had not been a Latin scholar standing around there waiting for his wife to buy a package of safty pins, what a predicament the girl would have been in. On behalf of the people, THE SUN thanks the board of education for adopting the continental system of pronounciation, only they ought to go further, and make it a crime punishable with suicide for anybody to pronounce it in any other way. There has been suffering enough by pronouncing it the old way.