“2

60 Flistory of Gutta-Percha Wultte.

 

couldn’t, However, as I said, before the day was
over, he knew at least a dozen words perfectly well
at sight.

Nor let any one think this was other than a
great step in the direction of reading. It would be
easy for Willie afterwards to break up these words
into letters.

‘It took him two days more—for during part of

each he was learning to make shoes—to learn to

know anywhere every word he had found in that
hymn.

Next he took a hymn he had not learned, and
applied to his mother when he came to a word he
did not know, which was very often. As soon as
she told him one, he hunted about until he found
another and another specimen of the same, and
so went on until he had fixed it quite in his
mind.

At length he began to compare words that were
like each other, and by discovering wherein they
looked the same, and wherein they looked differ-
ent, he learned something of the sound of the
letters. For instance, in comparing the and these,
although the one sound of the two letters, ¢ and 2,
puzzled him, and likewise the silent e, he conjec-
tured that the s must stand for the hissing sound,
and when he looked at other words which had that
sound, and perceived an sin every one of them,
then he was sure of it. His mother had no idea