Daffy Duck Reads Barton W. Stone

Today I whiled my afternoon away in front of a microfiche machine reading old texts from the early nineteenth century. Here’s a little piece of random information for you: in certain documents from the early 1800’s, any ‘s’ except the final ‘s’ in a word looks like an ‘f.’ And let me tell you, this can lead to fubfantial amounts of confufion, as I’m fure you’ll fee by the end of this poft.

For thofe of you who have enjoyed (or ftill enjoy) the occafional Looney Tunes epifode, you know exactly why I have chofen the title for this poft. When you replace ‘s’ with ‘f’ it founds a lot like filly Daffy Duck reading the old manufcript. As I have not yet rid myfelf of what dear Dr. Fofter calls an elementary fchool habit of reading aloud in my head, hours of this leads to an afternoon of near hyfteria. As if people aren’t fufpicious enough about your fanity (or at leaft your level of focial fkills) when they fee you hunkered down for hours on end in front of the microfiche reader, if they also fpy you giggling like a feventh grader in fex ed clafs, they really begin to fufpect that all’s not fo well upftairs.

Who came up with this lame idea of replacing the middle ‘s’ with ‘f’? Furely, this can only lead to maffive confufion! I realize that context plays a ferious role in all reading anyway, but honeftly! Talk about facrificing clarity for the fake of aefthetics!*

Fo, I juft decided to play a little game with myfelf (alfo harkening back to middle fchool years): how would the titles of fongs in the hymnal be different if we followed this convention prefently? Let me give you a teenfy fampling of my experiment: “Be Ftill My Foul,” “My Fins, My Fins, My Favior,” “Fervant Fong,” “When All of God’s Fingers Get Home,” “You Are the Fong That I Fing.” I’ve got more, but I’d love to hear what you might contribute (if you’re not feeling highly offended by my infantile antics)!


* Allow me to alfo note that it’s a good thing that the verb contemporarily ufed to defcribe devouring a lollipop does not often come up while perufing literature about Ftone’s view of the Atonement. Perhaps they would have thrown fanciful publifhing conventions out the window in that cafe! Although it did crofs my mind that doing refearch on a funny Friday afternoon, uh, ftinks.