Faraday to Margaret Faraday   29 December 1814

Rome: December 29, 1814.

Dear Margaret, - I am very happy to hear that you got my letter, and I am as happy to say that I have received yours. I had the last yesterday, and to-day I write you an answer. I am greatly obliged to you for the information you give me, and for the kind interest you take in my health and welfare. Give my love with a kiss to mother the first thing you do on reading the letter, and tell her how much I think on her and you. I received a letter from Mr. A[bbott] late¹, who told me you had spent a day in his house, and he thought that you were very well pleased with it; and when you go to Mr. B[en]’s again, you must return humble thanks for me, and say how much I am honoured by his remembrance. I hope that all your friends are well, and I suppose that your correspondence is now very important. I am glad to hear that my niece E[lizabeth]² is in favour with you, but you quite forget to give me any news of S[arah]³. I suppose thoughts of the first had put the last out of your head, which head, I fancy, has gained with these little relations a great deal of importance.

I am also pleased to hear that you go to school, and I hope that you have enough to do there. Your writing is not improved quite so much in one year as I expected it would be when I left home; but, however, it is pretty well. Your I’s are most in fault. You must make them thus, I. I. I. I.⁴ with smaller heads. My questions about Rome and Naples I did not expect you could answer, but I wished you to look into some book at school, or at Mr. Riebau’s or elsewhere, and give me the answers from them, at the same time fixing them in your memory. I gave them to you as lessons, and I still hope you will learn them. I hope that you do not neglect your ciphering and figures; they are almost as necessary as writing, and ought to be learned even in preference to French. Of this last you say nothing, but I suppose you still work at it. I will tell you my way of learning the words. When in my grammar or in other books I meet with a word (and that happens often enough) that I do not know, I first write it down on a fair sheet of paper, and then look in my dictionary for its meaning; and having found it, I put it down also, but on another part of the same sheet. This I do with every word I do not know very well, and my sheet of paper becomes a list of them, mixed and mingled together in the greatest confusion - English with French, and one word with another. This is generally a morning’s work. In the evening I take my list of words and my dictionary, and beginning at the top, I go regularly down to the bottom. On reading the words I endeavour to learn their pronunciation, and if I cannot remember the meaning in the other language, I look in the dictionary, and having found it, endeavour to fix it in my memory, and then go to the next word. I thus go over the list repeatedly, and on coming to a word which I have by previous readings learned, I draw a line over it; and thus my list grows little every evening, and increases in the morning, and I continually learn new and the most useful words from it. If you learn French and pursue this plan at home, you will improve in it very quickly. I must now, dear M[argaret], put an end to my letter. I have written to R[obert], lately, and shall write to him again soon, tell him. I wish him every happiness. Give my warmest love, with your own, to mother (and say I wrote about a month ago, by favour, to her⁵), and to R[obert] and B[en] and Mr. G[ray], and the little ones, and all your friends. Write again, at an opportunity, to your affectionate brother, | M. Faraday.