Alas, Bob Hirst's scholarship defeats my pun; it's no fun to smouch a smooch if the first "smouch" sounds like "ouch." So I stood corrected about Twain's pronunication, until Carolyn Richey weighed in with the authority of a native, though the passage of time does muddy the waters further. Indeed we wouldn't have this problem if, as Twain says, "we had an alphabet that was adequate and competent, instead of inadequate and incompetent. . . . Spelling reform has only made it bald-headed and unsightly. There is a whole tribe of them, "row," and "read" and "lead"--a whole family who don't know who they are. I ask you to pronounce s-o-w , and you ask me what kind of a one. If we had a sane, determinate alphabet, instead of a hospital of comminuted eunuchs, you would know whether one referred to the act of a man casting the seed over the ploughed land or whether one wished to recall the lady hog and the future ham." All well and good, but as Twain also said, "Simplified spelling is all right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far," and "It were not best that we should all talk alike; it is diff'rence of pronunciation that makes horse-races." Or something like that. Gregg