This old, long, and tedious way consists in teaching, first, the name of each of the twenty-six letters, then in combining these into unmeaning syllables of 'two letters,' 'three letters,' and, finally, into words of 'two syllables' and 'three syllables.' Very little regard is had to the meaning of the words. Indeed, it seems as if those who attempt to teach reading by this method supposed that the chief object should be to make their pupils fluent in oral spelling; and it ends in spelling, usually, since children thus taught go on spelling out their words through all the reading lessons, and seldom become intelligent readers. They give their attention to the words, instead of the ideas intended to be represented by them. When the child has succeeded in learning the names of the twenty-six letters, he has gained no knowledge of their real use as representatives of sounds, and, consequently, little ability in determining how to pronounce a new word from naming its letters. Besides, the names of the letters constantly mislead him when formed into words. "He may have made the acquaintance of each of the twenty-six individual letters, so as to recognize their faces and be able to call them by name singly; but when these same letters change places with their fellows, as they are grouped into different words, he is frequently unable to address many of them in a proper manner, or to determine what duties they perform in their different places. "Again, the words that are learned by naming over the letters which compose them seldom represent any ideas to the young learner; indeed, too many of the words learned by this method are only meaningless monosyllables. The children begin to read without understanding what they read, and thus is laid the foundation for the mechanical, unintelligible reading which characterizes most of that heard in schools where the A B C method is used. This plan is in violation of fundamental laws of teaching; it attempts to compel the child to do two things at the same time, and to do both in an unnatural manner, viz., to learn reading and spelling simultaneously, and reading through spelling. Reading has to deal with sounds and signs of thought.