le errour, if he claimed the incognito as his late
acquaintance _f_. Still, all these are slight difficulties; a moment's
reflection must convince us, that by teaching the common names of
every consonant in the alphabet, we prepare a child for misery, when
he begins to spell or read. A consonant, as sayeth the spelling-book,
is a letter which cannot be pronounced without a vowel before or after
it: for this reason, _B_, is called _be_, and _L_, _el_; but why the
vowel should come first in the one case, or last in the second, we are
not informed; nor are we told why the names of some letters have no
resemblance whatever to their sounds, either with a vowel before or
after them. Suppose, that after having learned the alphabet, a child
was to read the words

_Here is some apple-pye._
He would pronounce the letters thus:
_Acheare ies esoeme apepeele pewie._

With this pronunciation the child would never decipher these simple
words. It will be answered, perhaps, that no child is expected to read
as soon as he has learnt his alphabet: a long initiation of
monosyllabic, dissyllabic, trissyllabic, and polysyllabic words is
previously to be submitted to; nor, after this inauguration, are the
novices capable of performing with propriety the ceremony of reading
whole words and sentences. By a different method of teaching, all this
waste of labour and of time, all this confusion of rules and
exceptions, and all the consequent confusion in the understanding of
the pupil, may be avoided.

In teaching a child to read, every letter should have a precise single
sound annexed to its figure; this should never vary. Where two
consonants are joined together, so as to have but one sound, as ph,
sh, &c. the two letters should be coupled together by a distinct
invariable mark. Letters that are silent should be marked in such a
manner as to point out to the child that they are not to be sounded.
Upon these simple rules our method of teaching to read has been
founded. The signs or marks, by which these distinctions are to be
effected, are arbitrary, and may be varied as the teacher chooses; the
addition of a single point above or below the common letters is
employed to distinguish the different sounds that are given to the
same letter, and a mark underneath such letters as are to be omitted,
is the only apparatus necessary. These marks were employed by the
author in 1776, before he had seen Sheridan's, or any similar
dictionary;