But what is there in the nature and power of the letters to aid the child in perceiving--or, when told, in remembering--whether, when referring to the animal, he is to write _bear_, or _bare_, or _bair_, or _bayr_, or _bere_, as in _where_.

So with the word _you._ It seems to us the most natural thing in the world to spell it _y o u_.

And when the little pupil, judging by the sound, writes it _y u_, we mortify him by our ridicule, as if he had done something in itself absurd.
But how is he to know, except by the hardest, most meaningless, and distasteful toil of the memory, whether he is to write _you_, or _yu_, or _yoo,_ or _ewe_, or _yew_, or _yue_, as in _flue_, or even _yo_ as in _do_, and to determine when and in what cases respectively he is to use those different forms?
The truth is, that each elementary sound that enters into the composition of words is represented in our language by so many different combinations of letters, in different cases, that the child has very little clue from the sound of a syllable to guide him in the spelling of it.

We ourselves, from long habit, have become so accustomed to what we call the right spelling--which, of course, means nothing more than the customary one--that we are apt to imagine, as has already been said, that there is some natural fitness in it; and a mode of representing the same sound, which in one case seems natural and proper, in another appears ludicrous and absurd.

We smile to see _laugh_ spelled _larf,_ just as we should to see _scarf_ spelled _scaugh_, or _scalf_, as in _half_; and we forget that this perception of apparent incongruity is entirely the result of long habit in us, and has no natural foundation, and that children can not be sensible of it, or have any idea of it whatever.