have I pulled down and made little and despicable!  And, with what ease have I conveyed upon numerous important subjects, information and instruction to millions now alive, and provided a store of both for millions yet unborn!  As to the course to be pursued in this great undertaking, it is, first, to read the grammar from the first word to the last, very attentively, several times over; then, to copy the whole of it very correctly and neatly; and then to study the Chapters one by one.  And what do this reading and writing require as to time?  Both together not more than the tea-slops and their gossips for three months!  There are about three hundred pages in my English Grammar.  Four of those little pages in a day, which is a mere trifle of work, do the thing in three months.  Two hours a day are quite sufficient for the purpose; and these may, in any town that I have ever known, or in any village, be taken from that part of the morning during which the main part of the people are in bed.  I do not like the evening-candle-light work:  it wears the eyes much more than the same sort of light in the morning, because then the faculties are in vigour and wholly unexhausted.  But for this purpose there is sufficient of that day-light which is usually wasted; usually gossipped or lounged away; or spent in some other manner productive of no pleasure, and generally producing pain in the end.  It is very becoming in all persons, and particularly in the young, to be civil, and even polite:  but it becomes neither young nor old to have an everlasting simper on their faces, and their bodies sawing in an everlasting bow:  and, how many youths have I seen who, if they had spent, in the learning of grammar, a tenth part of the time that they have consumed in earning merited contempt for their affected gentility, would have laid the foundation of sincere respect towards them for the whole of their lives!

46. Perseverance is a prime quality in every pursuit, and particularly in this.  Yours is, too, the time of life to acquire this inestimable habit.  Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent and of good disposition:  as the race was not to the hare but to the tortoise, so the meed of success in study is to him who is not in haste, but to him who proceeds with a steady and even step.  It is not to a want of taste or of desire or of disposition to learn that we have to ascribe the rareness of good scholars, so much as to the want of patient perseverance.  Grammar is a branch of knowledge; like all other things of high value, it is of difficult acquirement:  the study is dry; the subject is intricate; it engages not the passions; and, if the great end be not kept constantly in view; if you lose, for a moment, sight of the ample reward, indifference begins, that is followed by weariness, and disgust and despair close the book.  To guard against this result be not in haste; keep steadily on; and,