Murray has been using a rather quant approach for collecting the information of what he calls his English Dictionary. Quite honestly my opinion is that we have enough with Dr. Johnson's edition, which contains vast amount of useful words, not otherwise accessible to the illiterate. Murray's conception is that this new dictionary shall also contain such trivial terms as 'the' and 'it'. In his overzealous jump into the dissection of our mother tongue, he has recruited the whole of our nation. Invitations were send to a large number of citizens and flyers, posters and other announcements are readily available throughout the country. He suggests enthused readers to sift through all publications made in the English language from the very early days to our current era, to acquire quotations and descriptions of  words of interest. Mr. Murray (I refuse to use the word Doctor) must not have realized that this is a direct invitation to London's commoners to send in quotations of the more vulgar sort, with the result that the Dictionary shall most likely only contain terms and definitions of the most sordid nature.

This did not stop the two men when I told them my thoughts on the quotation collection. "No Jeremy, you see this all wrong", Meyers said, "It is a highly intelligent approach. Murray has ensured himself that he will indeed obtain all possible references in existence. Something he could not have achieved even with just a very large staff." Meyers would not budge. Every evening and deep into the night they pour themselves over old tomes and write down sentences containing words they think should be included in the Dictionary. Some of the books were borrowed from Hubbard who has more older tomes and some rather unusual ones. Murray had conveniently provided interested parties with a suggested format and layout by which readers could track which 'catchwords' should be included. The selected word should be written at the top left and be followed by a page and line number of one of more quotations. How could anyone make sense out of these slips of paper, which apparently were coming in by the thousands at the headquarters of the Dictionary writers. From the looks of the samples I was shown by Leonard, they will need cryptographers and handwriting experts to decipher some of these quotations.

If this madness was not enough there was the news that one of the contributors was indeed mad, criminally mad to be exact. A certain Dr. William Chester Minor, currently being held at Broadmoor asylum for the insane had been sending in slips by the hundreds, a fair number of them actually included in the current work. To make matters even more confusing, it appears to be the case that Mr. Murray, who is mostly addressed as Doctor Murray, is not in fact an actual Doctor. This in comparison to the madman who happens to be a licensed physician. Perhaps a case of the blind leading the blind? You may believe me or not, that is for you to decide but in either case the current affairs surrounding the making of the English Dictionary has left our local book worms in a frenzy. Hubbard does not seem to be interested that much. He still uses Dr. Johnson's edition anyway. But he has provided some assistance. Either with finding certain works or providing suggestions for where to look for potential interesting works. It was his idea to focus on the animal kingdom. His reasoning was that most readers would work their way through fiction first, leaving all of the existent reference materials wide open for inspection. Meyers thought this a brilliant idea and immediately grabbed books on insects, whilst Leonard found a smaller work on birds.

Mr. Murray had announced that readers at this time should focus on words beginning with B. Apparently the headquarters of the Dictionary organization has already received hundreds of slips of paper all with the same quotation from Shakespeare: "To be or not to be". This prompted another announcement by Murray who now suggested that people should search for more unusual and uncommon words. Meyers and Leonard were doing better in that respect, although they had started to use the madman's annotation system, which to me was not an encouraging sight. Hubbard suggested to let them be and said this was probably a passing phase. I tend to agree, at least it keeps what I still believe is Leonard's criminal mind on the proper side of the law. I've included an example of what the men have concocted and sent to Mr. Murray for inclusion. As you can see it is interesting but not anything of importance.

Blight

5. Comb., as blight-beetle. blight-bird Austral. and N.Z., an early settlers' name for a bird belonging to the Australian genus Zosterops.

1852 T. HARRIS Insects New Eng. 79 This insect, which may be called the blight-beetle, from the injury it occasions, attacks also apple, apricot, and plum trees. 1870 R. TAYLOR Maori & Eng. Dict. 17/2 Kanohimowhiti, or Tauhau, white eye or blight bird (Zosterops lateralis) was first observed July, 1856 in the South, and about Auckland. 1882 T. H. POTTS Out in Open 130 The white-eye or blight-bird..clears away multitudes of small insect pests.

Sources: [1] Oxford English Dictionary, [2] The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester, HarperPerennial, New York, 1998, trade paperback, ISBN 0-06-017596-6. (Original British edition has the title The Surgeon of Crowthorne, ISBN 0-140-27128-7.)

Photo: Dr. William Chester Minor, taken at Broadmoor.