Seventh Pyanepsion. Court of the Seven Vowels. Action for assault with robbery. Sigma v. Tau. Plaintiff’s case—that the words in -ττ- are wrongfully withheld from him.
 Vowels of the jury.—For some time this Mr. Tau’s trespasses and encroachments on my property were of minor importance;
I made no claim for damages, and affected unconsciousness of what I heard; my conciliatory temper both you and the other letters have reason to know. His covetousness and folly, however, have now so puffed him up, that he is no longer content with my habitual concessions, but insists on more; I accordingly find myself compelled to get the matter settled by you who know both sides of it. The fact is, I am in bodily fear, owing to the crushing to which I am subjected. This evergrowing aggression will end by ousting me completely from

 

my own; I shall be almost dumb, lose my rank as a letter, and be degraded to a mere noise.

 Justice requires then that not merely you, the jury in this case, but the other letters also, should be on your guard against such attempts. If any one who chooses is to be licensed to leave his own place and usurp that of others, with no objection on your part (whose concurrence is an indispensable condition of all writing), I fail to see how combinations are to have their ancient constitutional rights secured to them. But my first reliance is upon you, who will surely never be guilty of the negligence and indifference which permits injustice; and even if you decline the contest, I have no intention of sitting down under that injustice myself.

 It is much to be regretted that the assaults of other letters were not repelled when they first began their lawless practices; then we should not be watching the still pending dispute between Lambda and Rho for possession of κεφαλαλγία or κεφαλαργία, κίσηλις or κίσηρις: Gamma would not have had to defend its rights over γνάφαλλα, constantly almost at blows with Kappa in the debatable land, and per contra it would itself have dropped its campaign against Lambda (if indeed it is more dignified than petty larceny) for converting μόλις to μόγις: in fact lawless confusion generally would have been nipped in the bud. And it is well to abide by the established order; such trespasses betray a revolutionary spirit.

 Now our first legislators—Cadmus the islander, Palamedes, son of Nauplius, or Simonides, whom some authorities credit with the measure—were not satisfied with determining merely our order of precedence in the alphabet; they also had an eye to our individual qualities and faculties. You, Vowels of the jury, constitute the first Estate, because you can be uttered independently; the semi-vowels, requiring support before they can be distinctly heard, are the second; and the lowest Estate

 

they declared to consist of those nine which cannot be sounded at all by themselves. The vowels are accordingly the natural guardians of our laws.