ve been
sent earliest to school. The habit of reading the words without
understanding the meaning of what they read, having once been acquired,
the weak powers of children are not sufficient to overcome the
difficulties with which this habit has surrounded them. They feel
themselves burdened and harassed with unnatural and unmeaning exercises
for years, before they can acquire the art of reading the words of the
simplest school book; and, what is still worse, after they have left the
school, and have entered upon the busy scenes of life, they find, that
they have now to teach themselves an entirely new art,--the art of
_understanding by reading_. Instead of all this waste of energy, and
patience, and time, experience has fully proved, that by following the
plain and easy dictates of Nature, as above explained, all the drudgery
of learning to read may be got over in a week,--it has been times
without number accomplished in a single day,[16]--and this without any
harassing exertion, and generally with delight. Of the truth of this, a
few out of many instances may here be enumerated.

In the summer of 1831, the writer one morning found himself, by mere
accident, and a perfect stranger, in a Sunday school in the borough of
Southwark, London. He attached himself first to a class of children,
some of whom he found on enquiry had been two years at the school, and
were yet only learning the alphabet. In the same school, and on the same
morning, a young man who only knew his letters, but had never yet
attempted to put them together, was classified with the infants, whom he
had willingly joined in his anxiety to learn. He had a lesson by
himself. By a rigid adherence to the above principle of individuation,
this young man, to his own great astonishment, was able in a few minutes
to read a verse. The lesson went on, and in somewhat less than half an
hour he had mastered several verses, and now knew perfectly how to make
use of the letters in decyphering the several words. By that one lesson
he found himself quite able to teach himself. In proof of this, as was
afterwards ascertained, he read that same day on going home, without
help, nineteen verses of the same chapter; and these verses, on
returning to school on the same afternoon, he read correctly and without
hesitation, to his usual and astonished teacher. There can be no doubt,
from this circumstance, that if it had been at all necessary, he could,
without further aid, and wi