The first lesson in the _Orbis pictus_ is a dialogue between a teacher and a pupil. The former says, “Come, boy, learn to be wise.” Whereupon the latter asks, “What doth this mean?” The master makes reply, “To understand rightly, to do rightly, and to speak rightly all that are necessary.” The boy asks who will teach him these things, to which the master makes reply, “I, by God’s help, will guide thee through all. I will show thee all; I will name thee all.” To all this the boy makes eager response: “See, here I am. Lead me in the name of God.” The master concludes the dialogue with this injunction: “Before all things thou oughtest to learn the plain sounds of which man’s speech consisteth, which living creatures know how to make, and thy tongue knoweth how to imitate, and thy hand can picture out. Afterward we will go into the world, and we will view all things.” Mr. Maxwell[38] thus characterizes this introduction and the picture that illustrates it: “The boy, a plump but not a pleasing person, and the master, a man ‘severe’ and ‘stern to view,’ who has evidently all the frowns and none of the jokes of Goldsmith’s schoolmaster. They are conversing on a barren plain, the only other living thing in sight being a wild animal apparently of some extinct species. In the background are a village church, of the regulation pattern, the roofs of houses, and a couple of pyramids which are intended for mountains.” The introduction is followed by an illustrated lesson on the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, with a picture and statement (in the vernacular and Latin) of the sounds made by animals. The crow illustrates the sound of _a_, the statement in the English being, “The crow crieth”; in the Latin, _Cornix cornicatur_. A lamb illustrates the sound of _b_, the statement being, “The lamb bleateth” (Latin, _Agnus balat_). And so on through the alphabet. This is what Comenius calls “a lively and vocal alphabet.”