“Why—yes,” said Lucy. “Suppose they wanted me to open the door. Well, and then they tell me to shut the door: well, then I go and try, but I can’t reach up to the door: well, then I get a chair, and I try to climb up, and—and the door sticks, and I can’t pull it down, and perhaps I tumble down and hurt me. An’t those difficulties?”
“Yes,” said her father, “and perhaps, too, the door would sometimes be left not shoved up quite high enough, and then people would bump their heads.”
“Yes,” said Lucy; “and, father, Georgie bumped his head the other day, and the teacher asked him to spell bumper.”
“And did that make him forget his pain?”
“Yes, sir, but he didn’t spell his word right.”
“Didn’t he?” said her father. “Then his experience of the thing did not teach him the orthography of the word.”
“What, sir?” said Lucy.
“His experience of the thing did not teach him the orthography of the word,” repeated her father.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” said Lucy.
“Why, by bumping his own head, he experienced the thing, but yet he could not spell the word. The orthography of a word means the spelling of it.”