31. This will also teach you to think, and that is one of the most important objects for which you go to school. It will enable you also to understand what you read; and you can always read those things best which you understand well. LESSON XII. _Reading and Spelling._ 1. Another important thing for which you go to school is to learn how to spell. It is not always very easy to spell, because there are so many different ways in which the same letters are pronounced in different words. 2. That you may understand what I mean, I shall give an example, to show you how many different ways the same letters are pronounced in different words; and also another example, to show you how many different ways there are of spelling the same syllable. 3. To show you, first, in how many different ways the same letters are pronounced in different words, I shall take the letters o, u, g, h. 4. The letters _o, u, g, h_, are sounded or pronounced like the letter _o_ alone, in the word _though_. The letters _o, u, g, h_, are pronounced like _uf_, in the word _tough_. 5. In the word _cough_, the letters _o, u, g, h_, are pronounced like _off_. In the words _slough_ and _plough_, the letters _o, u, g, h_, are pronounced like _ow_; and in the word _through_, they are pronounced like _ew_, or like _u_. 6. In the word _hiccough_ the letters _ough_ are pronounced like _up_--and in the word _lough_, the letters are pronounced like _lok_. 7. There are many words which end with a sound like _shun_; and this syllable is spelled in many different ways, as you will see in the following example. 8. In the words _ocean_, _motion_, _mansion_, _physician_, _halcyon_, _Parnassian_, _Christian_, and many other such words, the last syllable is pronounced as if it were spelled _shun_. 9. You see, then, that in some words a syllable sounding very much like _shun_ is spelled _cean_, as in ocean; in some it is spelled _tion_, as in nation; in some it is spelled _sion_, as in mansion; in some it is spelled _cian_, as in physician; in some it is spelled _cyon_, as in halcyon; in some it is spelled _sian_, as in Parnassian. 10. It is such things as these which make both reading and spelling very hard lessons for young children. If they think of them all at once, as the pendulum did of the eighty-six thousand times that it had to swing in twenty-four hours, it is no wonder if they feel discouraged, and say, I can't get these hard lessons. 11. But you must recollect that, as the pendulum, every time it had to swing, had a moment given it to swing in, so you also have a moment given you to learn everything in; and if you get a little at a time, you will, in the end, finish it all, if it be ever so large.