The book opens with the names of twelve objects, which the teacher must have before him. These names have been selected with a view to embracing the whole alphabet, so that when the pupil has learned to write them, he has also learned to form all the letters in use. The teacher then directs the pupil, in writing, to touch one of these objects, and, in reply to the written question, "What did you do?" to write such a sentence as this, "I touched the box." In a similar way are taught, by gradual advancement, all the personal pronouns, nominative, possessive and objective, singular and plural, the interrogatives "who," "which," "what," "how many" and "where," the inflections of case and number in nouns, the distinction to be observed between the definite and the indefinite article, the proper use of prepositions, the conjunction "and," the words and characters expressing numerals up to one hundred, adjectives denoting color and other properties equally perceptible, and a considerable number of verbs. The sentence-forms are confined to the illustration of the government of the objective case by the transitive verb or its equivalent, and time is exemplified by the present imperative and the past indicative. The exercises which are to be performed by the mutual action of the teacher and pupil, are printed in script type, so that the latter, in learning to write, may have a clear and correct model constantly before him, for educating the eye and training the hand. This first book provides an introduction to a course and has been designed particularly for class-instruction, but it is equally well adapted to the education of a single pupil.