to books. The wise Bacon, in his essay Of Studies, says, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." The reference books you consult in gathering material for a theme are to be tasted-to be read only in parts; the magazines and most of the books you read merely for pleasure or for information are to be swallowed to be read, but not curiously (carefully); the English and American classics set for study in your course of study, if well chosen, are to be chewed and digested to be read wholly (studied), and with diligence and attention. In making notes of what you read you will find it well always to digest the thought, even when you merely "taste" books, and to state that thought in your own words, copying only what you think you may quote. In copying it is no more than common honesty to put within quotation marks that which you copy, and in quoting it is well to give the name of the author, the title of the work, and the volume, chapter, page, or whatever in each case will most precisely locate the passage quoted. Exercise 15 1. Take the last theme you wrote, and set down in note form on a separate sheet of paper the thoughts you know were your own. On another sheet set down in the same manner the thoughts you got from some book, indicating, if you can, the particular source of each important thought. The purpose of this exercise is to show you the extent to which you depended on books for the material of your theme. 2. Select one of the following articles, or one that your teacher assigns you instead, and take notes: "A Day's Work on a Snow-Plough," H. H. Lewis, The World's Work, January, 1901; "Fifty Cents a Week at Harvard," John Hechtor, Success, July, 1901; "Migration to the Canadian Northwest," Cy Warman, The American Monthly Review of Reviews, September, 1902; "How to Judge a Horse," E. A. A. Grange, The Cosmopolitan, January, 1901; "How to Have Fun at a Picnic," Dan Beard, The Ladies' Home Journal, July, 1900; "A Boys' Stag Party," Dan Beard, ibid., March, 1900; "A Panorama Party," Dan Beard, ibid., February, 1900; a dozen or more articles similar to the last three, by Dan Beard, will be found in The Ladies' Home Journal for 1899-1900, beginning with June, 1899; "A Trained Colonial Civil Service," E. G. Bourne, North American Review, October, 1899; "Our Government of Newly Acquired Territory," Carl Evans Boyd, The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1898; "A Junior Republic and Its Lesson," Robert Gray, Success, August, 1901; "What They Do at Vassar," Mary MacColl, ibid., September, 1901; "A Girl's College Life," Lavinia Hart, The Cosmopolitan, June, 1901; "The Art of Seeing Things," John Burroughs, The Century Magazine, December, 1899. In taking notes of what you read, you should go at your work rather more deliberately, and make your notes somewhat fuller than you do when you take notes of what you hear. (1) Read the article through to get some notion of what it is about; (2) give it a second reading, and this time take your notes; (3) take no more notes than you need for the purpose in hand, and state them in your own words. If you copy the author's words put them within quotation marks. Here are some notes from an interesting article by Dan Beard in The Ladies' Home Journal for September, 1900: HOW TO MAKE AN ATTIC GYMNASIUM The attic is a good place for a home gymnasium; will give enjoyment on rainy days. Things needed to furnish gymnasium:— 1. Parallel bars. Make the bars of straight-grained pine, strong enough to support body at full swing. Support bars by two uprights nailed to rafters and toe-nailed to floor, or steady with braces. Gauge space between bars by experimenting with chairs. 2. Punching bag. Make frame for same of 2 x 4 pieces, and nail to rafters overhead. Use light lumber on platform, and suspend ball by line running through hole in centre of platform. 3. Chinning bar. Nail two 2x4 pieces to rafters and floor; through these pieces bore several sets of holes to receive at convenient heights a strong, rounded bar of wood. 4. Weight machines. To the wall nail a board as high as your shoulder. Fasten block to top of board, and attach pulley to block. Make weight of bag filled with shot or pebbles, and use a wood block for a top, to which block attach another pulley. “From a screw-eye under the block, at the top of the board, run a piece of window-sash cord through the pulley on the weight, up to and through the pulley at the top of the board, and thence to a wooden handle." Make two such machines, one for each hand. 5. Wrist machine. [Notes omitted for lack of space.] 6. Weights of any shape, if not too heavy, will do for dumb-bells and Indian clubs. 7. A light wooden chair, grasped by back or rungs, will afford good exercise and many pretty evolutions. 8. A smooth floor will permit of practice in walking on the hands. 9. An old mattress is handy for falls. 3. Make a list of five or more subjects on which you can find a good deal of material in the most recent issues of the newspapers and magazines. Underscore those you would like to write about. 4. From the following list of subjects select two that you would like to know more about than you now know, and for each subject make out a list of references to books and periodicals in which material on it can be found. To do this work you had better consult some list of reference works, as well as the catalogue of your public library, to see what books and periodicals are accessible, and then examine them carefully enough to find the needed references. You ought to know the books that are accessible for reference in your school, town, or city library, and the particular merits of the most important; the use of the card catalogue, if your public library has a card catalogue; the use of the index and table of contents in a book; and, in general, anything that will emphasize the time-saving importance of knowing before starting for a library just what to look for, and of becoming well enough acquainted with books of reference to know on reaching a library just where to look for the thing wanted. Read Koopman's Mastery of Books, especially pages 48-62, which treat of reference books and catalogues. 1. How marbles are made. 2. The origin of Thanksgiving. 5. The White House. 6. The habits of the Eskimos. 7. How birds pass the night. 8. Some things the fox does. 5. Write a connected paragraph on one of the subjects you worked on in 4. SECTION 7 How to Gather Material 3. BY THINKING At the beginning of Section 5 something was said about thinking, but the thinking there referred to had to do mainly with the finding and setting down of the thoughts that come to you just after you have chosen, limited, and worded your subject, and before you have searched for material elsewhere than in your own mind; the material here referred to has to do rather with the material you have gathered by some other process, - by seeing, or by reading, for instance. It means the turning of such material over and over in your mind until you have thought all the vagueness out of it, and, by this means, the adding of new material, which in reality is your own thought, to what you have already gathered. This process, it is true, is going on all the while you are gathering material by whatever means is within your power, and all the while it is adding to and changing the material you are gathering; but the process must be applied by itself after you have finished gathering material by other means. Thinking the vagueness out of your material is not always an easy task, but it is none the less an essential task. You are not ready to write until you have looked through and through your material, and by continuous thought have made it quite your own. Keep it in your mind as long as you can before writing, brood upon it, try to see something new in it; construct your theme in your thought before you set it down on paper. Exercise 16 Take some material you have already gathered, and think it over, applying as best you can the method outlined in Section 7. Set down in note form the new thoughts that occur to you, and set them down the moment they occur to you, no matter where you may be. Keep the material in your mind for three or four days, -the longer, the better, — using your spare moments to think it over. Five or ten minutes spent in steady thinking, at several different periods of the day when your mind is fresh, will insure good results. |