"We shall know each other when we meet again .-- I suppose this is D, mamma.

How d'e do, Mr D?
And what's this one with its mouth open, and half its tongue cut off ?" His mother told him it was E.
"Then this one, with no foot to stand on, is Fe, I suppose." His mother laughed; but whoever gave it the name it has, would have done better to call it Fe, as Willie did.

It would be much better also, in teaching children, at least, to call H, He, and W, We, and Y, Ye, and Z, Ze, as Willie called them.

But it was easy enough for him to learn their names after he knew so much of what they could _do_.
What gave him a considerable advantage was, that he had begun with verse, and not dry syllables and stupid sentences.

The music of the verse repaid him at once for the trouble of making it out--even before he got at the meaning, while the necessity of making each line go right, and the rhymes too, helped him occasionally to the pronunciation of a word.
The farther he got on, the faster he got on; and before six weeks were over, he could read anything he was able to understand pretty well at sight.
By this time, also, he understood all the particulars as to how a shoe is made, and had indeed done a few stitches himself, a good deal of hammering both of leather and of hob-nails, and a little patching, at which last the smallness of his hands was an advantage.
At length, one day, he said to the shoemaker-- "Shall I read a little poem to you, Hector ?" "You told me you couldn't read, Willie." "I can now though." "Do then," said Hector.
Looking for but a small result in such a short time, he was considerably astonished to find how well the boy could read; for he not merely gave the words correctly, but the sentences, which is far more difficult; that is, he read so that Hector could understand what the writer meant.
It is a great thing to read well.