ByFREDERICK PACKARD

LOTTIE FARNUM didn’t go to pieces all at once. It took several years for her to become what psychiatrists call a “damaged personality.” No one was ever certain what brought it on. Her relatives and friends simply became aware that what had begun as a rather deplorable conversational habit had developed into a sort of psychosis, and they avoided her as they had never done in the days when she was just a mild, rather attractive young woman with a taste for Spoonerisms.

It is thought, but not established, that reading Beerbohm to excess touched off some mental spring. Marked passages were found in her books. One was about a speaker who unintentionally said, “Three cheers for the queer old dean!” instead of “Three cheers for the dear old Queen! ” Another concerned a man who had been “bored to death by a gull.” In time she became unable to speak the English language without Spoonerizing all the words in the sentence.

It was at least bearable when she said things like “He put the heart before the course,” speaking of a student who had left college in order to marry, but after a while she began to slither and slide and utter unintentional and meaningless horrors like “stews nand” for “news stand,” “trewery bruck” for “brewery truck,” and “one swell foop” for “one fell swoop.”

Even when darkness was closing in she managed occasionally to bring forth one with at least some point. One day she found an old newspaper somewhere and came cackling up to one of her remaining friends. “Look,” she said, beside herself, pointing to a headline which read: “HOOVER FAILS TO CONVINCE SENATE, Betrays Indecision in Speech.” “Look,” she cackled. “He was Hesident Proover. Hahaha! Hesitant Prover. See?”

It was shortly after this that her family arranged for her to live in the country, in a nice quiet place. She was given a book called 1000 Choice Spoonerisms, and a patient elderly woman was retained at substantial wages to listen to her and look after her wants. She is quite happy. When loyal friends come to visit, she greets them with “Fello, hoiks. Thow are hings in the cig bity? Query viet hound rere.” Sometimes people understand her.