Dear Comrade:
We are finishing in this lesson the study of a very important part of
speech. Adverbs are a necessary part of our vocabulary, and most of us
need a greater supply than we at present possess. We usually have a few
adverbs and adjectives in our vocabulary which are continually
overworked. Add a few new ones to your vocabulary this week.
Do not slight the exercises in these lessons. The study of the lesson is
only the beginning of the theoretical knowledge. You do not really know
a thing until you put it into practice. You may take a correspondence
course on how to run an automobile but you can not really know how to
run a machine until you have had the practical experience. There is only
one way to become expert in the use of words and that is to use them.
Every day try to talk to some one who thinks and reads. While talking
watch their language and your own. When a word is used that you do not
fully understand, look it up at your very first opportunity and if you
like the word use it a number of times until it has become your word.
We have been following in these letters, which are our weekly talks
together, the development of the alphabet. It is really a wonderful
story. It brings to us most vividly the struggle of the men of the past.
Last week we found how they began to use symbols to express syllables,
parts of a word. We found that this was a great step in advance. Do you
not see that this was not an eye picture but an ear picture? The symbol
did not stand for the picture of the object it named but each symbol
stood for the sound which composed part of the word.
After a while it dawned upon some one that all the words which man used
were expressed by just a few sounds. We do not know just when this
happened but we do know that it was a wonderful step in advance.
Cumbersome pictures and symbols could be done away with now. The same
idea could be expressed by a few signs which represented the few sounds
which were used over and over again in all words. Let us not fail to
realize what a great step in advance this was. These symbols represented
sounds. The appeal was through the _ear gate_ of man, not through the
_eye gate_.
Thus came about the birth of the alphabet, one of the greatest and most
momentous triumphs of the human mind. Because of this discovery, we can
now form thousands of combinations expressing all our ideas with only
twenty-three or twenty-four symbols,--letters that represent sounds.
Since we have at our command all of this rich fund of words, let us not
be content to possess only a few for ourselves. Add a word daily to your
vocabulary and you will soon be surprised at the ease and fluency of
your spoken and written speech; and with this fluency in speech will
come added power in every part of your life.
Yours for Education,