I only try it as a sort of intellectual experiment." The boy accordingly began again, but was soon completely confused by the teacher's accompaniment.

He stopped in the middle of his line, saying, "I could say it, only you put me out." "Well, now try to say the Alphabet, and let me see if I can put you out there." As might have been expected, the teacher failed.

The boy went regularly onward to the end.
"You see, now," said the teacher to the class who had witnessed the experiment, "that this boy knows his Alphabet in a different sense from that in which he knows his Multiplication Table.

In the latter, his knowledge is only imperfectly his own; he can make use of it only under favorable circumstances.

In the former it is entirely his own; circumstances have no control over him." A child has a lesson in Latin Grammar to recite.