Page:Fors Clavigera, Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain.djvu/27

19 Now, you see that makes a pretty ornamental letter T, with a little joint in the middle of its stalk.

And this letter T you must always be able to write, out of your head, without a moment's hesitation. However stupid you may be at learning by rote, thus much can always be done by dint of sheer patient repetition. Read the centre column straight down, over and again, for an hour together, and you will find it at last begin to stick in your head. Then, as soon as it is fast there, say it over and over again when it is dark, or when you are out walking, till you can't make a mistake in it. Then observe farther that Peleg, in whose days the earth was divided, had a brother named Joktan, who had thirteen children. Of these, you need not mind the names of ten; but the odd three are important to you—Sheba, Ophir, and Havilah. You have perhaps heard of these before; and assuredly, if you go on reading Fors, you will hear of them again. And these thirteen children of Joktan, you see, had their dwelling "from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the East." I don't know anything about Mesha and Sephar, yet; but I may: in the meantime, learn the sentence, and recollect that these people are fixed somewhere, at any rate, because they are to be Masters of Gold, which is fixed in Eastern, or Western, mountains; but that the children of the other brother, Peleg, can go wherever they like,