ABSTRACT
The act of reading is truly an astonishing thing. It is a kind of miracle. The mere contemplation of the magical act of gazing at a page, filled with odd and, in many ways, meaningless symbols, with the resultant experience of thought, is almost frightening. Stop to consider it for a moment. An adult reader opens a book which he holds before him. On the shining white page of paper someone has imprinted in English, twenty-six symbols, arranged in curious patterns and sequences. Sometimes one of the symbols will stand alone. On other occasions it may be seen that two symbols are set together; or three may appear, or four, or five, or seven, or ten, or any number may be arranged in a seemingly endless variety of arrangements. This is the first part of the miracle of reading. Still something else occurs, however, which is even more startling.
