They learn, in learning to talk, what sound serves as the name by which the drops of water that they find upon the grass in the morning is denoted, but they can have no clue whatever to guide them in determining which of the various modes by which precisely that sound is represented in different words, as _dew, do, due, du, doo_, and _dou_, is to be employed in this case, and they become involved in hopeless perplexity if they attempt to imagine "_how it ought to be spelled_;" and we think them stupid because they can not extricate themselves from the difficulty on our calling upon them to "think!" No doubt there is a reason for the particular mode of spelling each particular word in the language--but that reason is hidden in the past history of the word and in facts connected with its origin and derivation from some barbarous or dead language, and is as utterly beyond the reach of each generation of spellers as if there were no such reasons in existence.

There can not be the slightest help in any way from the exercise of the thinking or the reasoning powers.
It is true that the variety of the modes by which a given sound may be represented is not so great in all words as it is in these examples, though with respect to a vast number of the words in common use the above are fair specimens.

They were not specially selected, but were taken almost at random.

And there are very few words in the language the sound of which might not be represented by several different modes.
Take, for example, the three last words of the last sentence, which, as the words were written without any thought of using them for this purpose, may be considered, perhaps, as a fair specimen of words taken actually at random.

The sound of the word _several_ might be expressed in perfect accordance with the usage of English spelling, as _ceveral, severul, sevaral, cevural_, and in many other different modes.