“Now, what does that look like to you?”
“It looks something like the tents those soldiers put up when they camped near here,” said Jim, after looking at it for a moment.
“Very well; that’s A. Now, when you say ‘A tent,’ there you have it, all right.”
“That’s easy enough to remember,” said Jim, “I thought it would be harder.”
“I’ll tell you what this second fellow looks like, to me,” said Johnny, delighted with Jim’s quickness, “it always makes me think of a bumble-bee, and its name’s B.”
“That’s queer,” answered Jim, “it does look like a big, fat bee, sure enough. I guess I can remember that, too.”
It was not easy to find likenesses like these for all the letters, but when Johnny could not think of anything in the way of a likeness, he told Jim of something strange or funny that the letter “stood for,” and felt quite sure, when the alphabet had been “gone through,” that every letter was firmly impressed upon Jim’s memory.
“Do you want to begin to learn to write now, or wait till you’ve learned to read?” inquired Johnny, when the reading-lesson was finished.