F." I soon learned these letters, and for what they were placed on the timbers.
My work was now, to keep fire under the steam box, and to watch the ship yard while the carpenters had gone to dinner.

This interval gave me a fine opportunity for copying the letters named.

I soon astonished myself with the ease with which I made the letters; and the thought was soon present, "if I can make four, I can make more." But having made these easily, when I met boys about Bethel church, or any of our play-grounds, I entered the lists with them in the art of writing, and would make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask them to "beat that if they could." With playmates for my teachers, fences and pavements for my copy books, and chalk for my pen and ink, I learned the art of writing.

I, however, afterward adopted various methods of improving my hand.

The most successful, was copying the _italics_ in Webster's spelling book, until{134} I could make them all without looking on the book.