Mark Twain's speech before the Engineers Club in New York in 1907 is an American Classic. His gentle send up of a simplified spelling effort at the time is humorous and altogether accurate.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain is one of America's literary treasures. Not only a great writer of classics like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Twain was an essayist, humorist and wonderful speaker. He would, and could converse on just about any topic. From politics, to the arts, to literature, to journalism, to history, Twain was never boring. With an acerbic yet playful style, he played his audiences and readers like a maestro, and had them loving every word by the time he was finished. This speech to the New York Engineers Club in 1907 honoring Andrew Carnegie is an example of his talents as he takes on the English language and its sometimes confusing foundational spelling practices.