Printing looked to all of us at first just masses of meaningless little marks.
But after a few days at school how things did begin to clear up! It wasn't a jumble after all. There was something to it. It straightened itself out until the funny little marks became significant. Each of them had a meaning and the same meaning under all conditions. Through them your whole outlook on life became deepened and broadened—all because you learned the meaning of twenty-six little letters and their combinations!
Reading People
¶ Learning to read men and women is a more delightful process than learning to read books, for every person you see is a true story, more romantic and absorbing than any ever bound in covers.
Learning to read people is also a simpler process than learning to read books because there are fewer letters in the human alphabet. Though man seems to the untrained eye a mystifying mass of "funny little marks," he is not now difficult to analyze.
Only a Few Feelings
¶ This is because there are after all but a few kinds of human feelings. Some form of hunger, love, hate, fear, hope or ambition gives rise to every human emotion and every human thought.
Thoughts Bring Actions
¶ Now our actions follow our thoughts. Every thought, however transitory, causes muscular action, which leaves its trace in that part of the physical organism which is most closely allied to it.