is looking for Harold. It may be that a whale hasn’t that fin up
there on his back, but I do not remember; and so, since there is
a doubt, it is best to err on the safe side. He looks better,
anyway, than he would without it.
Be very careful and ATTENTIVE while you are drawing your
first whale from my sample and writing the word and figures under
it, so that you will not need to copy the sample any more.
Compare your copy with the sample; examine closely; if you find
you have got everything right and can shut your eyes and see the
picture and call the words and figures, then turn the sample and
copy upside down and make the next copy from memory; and also the
next and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from memory
until you have finished the whole twenty-one. This will take you
twenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find that
you can make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person can
make a sardine; also, up to the time you die you will always be
able to furnish William’s dates to any ignorant person that
inquires after them.
You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two
inches square, and do William II. (Fig. 4.)
Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also
make him small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick
look in the eye. Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the
other William, and that would be confusing and a damage. It is
quite right to make him small; he was only about a No. 11 whale,
or along there somewhere; there wasn’t room in him for his
father’s great spirit. The barb of that harpoon ought not to
show like that, because it is down inside the whale and ought to
be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb were
removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock into
the whale. It is best to leave the barb the way it is, then
every one will know it is a harpoon and attending to business.
Remember–draw from the copy only once; make your other twelve
and the inscription from memory.
Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and
its inscription once from my sample and two or three times from
memory the details will stay with you and be hard to forget.
After that, if you like, you may make merely the whale’s HEAD and
WATER-SPOUT for the Conqueror till you end his reign, each time
SAYING the inscription in place of writing it; and in the case of
William II. make the HARPOON alone, and say over the inscription
each time you do it. You see, it will take nearly twice as long
to do the first set as it will to do the second, and that will
give you a marked sense of the difference in length of the two reigns.
Next do Henry I. on thirty-five squares of RED paper.
(Fig. 5.)
That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable.
When you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are
perfectly sure of them, draw merely the hen’s head the rest of the
thirty-five times, saying over the inscription each time. Thus:
(Fig. 6).
You begin to understand how how this procession is going to
look when it is on the wall. First there will be the Conqueror’s
twenty-one whales and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares
joined to one another and making a white stripe three and one-
half feet long; the thirteen blue squares of William II. will be
joined to that–a blue stripe two feet, two inches long, followed
by Henry’s red stripe five feet, ten inches long, and so on. The
colored divisions will smartly show to the eye the difference in
the length of the reigns and impress the proportions on the
memory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.)
Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen two-inch
squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 8.)
That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of