“I don’t know,” said Jim, “what’s the first thing you do when you learn to write, anyhow?”
“You make ‘strokes’ first, like that—” and Johnny made a few rapidly on the slate—“to sort of get your hand in, and then, when you can make them pretty well, you go on to ‘pot-hooks and trammels’—like these”—and he illustrated on the slate again—“and when you can make them pretty well, then you begin to make letters.”
“Well, then, I might as well begin right off,” said Jim, “I don’t have to know how to read before I can make ‘strokes,’ that’s plain, and if it takes so long just to get your hand in, the sooner I start, the better!”
“Yes, I think so too,” said Johnny, encouragingly, “for of course, you needn’t know how to read, to make ‘strokes’ or ‘pot-hooks and trammels’ either, and you see you’ll be all ready, this way, to make the letters, by the time you can read printing—maybe before. Here, I’ll rule your slate, but I’ll ask mamma to set you the copy. I can’t make as good strokes—or anything else for that matter—as she can, and papa says a copy, any kind of a copy, ought to be perfect.”
Mrs. Leslie willingly set the copy, and guided Jim’s hand over the first row. Nothing in her look or manner suggested to Jim that her soft white fingers felt any objection to taking hold of his grimy ones, but from that time he always asked Johnny for soap and water, when the gardening was done, and came to his lessons with hands as clean as vigorous scrubbing could make them.
When he had covered both sides of his new slate with “strokes,” which Johnny assured him were quite as good as the first ones he had made, they both decided that the lesson had been long enough for that time, and parted with cordial good-nights.
“I didn’t know it was so easy to teach people, mamma!” said Johnny, exultingly, as soon as his pupil was out of hearing, “why, it’s no trouble at all!”
Mrs. Leslie smiled.
“Jim seems to be a bright boy,” she said, “but you must remember that his mind is like your garden; things must be planted in it, and you must wait a while for them to come up. I don’t wish to discourage you, dear, but learning is a new business to him, as teaching is to you, and I think this would be a good text for both of you to start with—‘Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.’”