_Hard Words._
1. In one of the former lessons, you were taught how to read long and
hard words, by taking them to pieces, and reading a part of a word at a
time.
2. I promised you also that this book should not be filled with hard
words; but I did not promise that there should be no hard words in it.
3. Having taught you how to read hard words, I propose, in this lesson,
to give you a few long words to read,--not for the purpose of
understanding what they mean, but only to make you able to read such
words, when you find them in any other book.
4. The best way of getting rid of all difficulties, is to learn how to
overcome them, and master them; for they cease to be difficulties, when
you have overcome them.
5. Demos'thenes, as I told you in the last lesson, had a very hard task
to perform, before he became a great orator. You, also, can become a
good scholar, if you will take pains to study your lessons, and learn
them well.
6. Before you read any lesson to your teacher from this book, it is
expected that you will study it over, and find out all the most
difficult words, so that you may read them right off to him, without
stopping to find them out, while he is waiting to hear you read them.
7. Now, here I shall place a few hard words for you to study over, to
read to your teacher when you read this lesson to him; and he will
probably require every one in your class to read them all aloud to him.
8. I wish you not to go up to your teacher to ask him to assist you,
until you have tried yourself to read them, and find that you cannot.
9. There are some words that are not pronounced as they are spelt, as I
have taught you in a former lesson.
10. Such a word as _phthisic_, which is pronounced as if it were spelled
_tis´ic_, I dare say would puzzle you, if you had never seen it before;
but before you go up to your teacher, to ask him any questions, you
should read over the whole of your lesson, and perhaps you will find, in
the lesson itself, something that will explain what puzzled you; and
thus you could find it out from your book, without troubling your
teacher.