them, and you think your thoughts, not in complete sentences, but in fragments of sentences, or, rather, in pictures which answer to fragments of sentences, and which flash one after another through your mind. Yesterday you took a walk, let us suppose, through Dark Lane, and home through the village of Danvers. The landscape was wholly autumnal. You saw an elderly man laden with two dry, yellow, rustling bundles of Indian cornstalks, a good personification of Autumn. You saw another man digging up potatoes. Rows of white cabbages lay ripening in the sun. There were whole fields of Indian corn, and so on.1 If to-day you wish to write an account of what you saw, you will sit for a moment thinking over the scene of yesterday, and the mental pictures you then took will again flash one after another through your mind. You will not think, "Yesterday I took a walk through Dark Lane, and came home through the village of Danvers," or, "The landscape was wholly autumnal," but something after this fashion: "Yesterday walked through Dark Lane-home through Danverslandscape autumnal — old man with two bundles of cornstalks-dry, dry, yellow, rustling - good personification of Autumn another man digging up potatoes rows of cabbages ripening-fields of corn." And so in taking notes, for immediate use, of what you see, of what you think, of what you read, of what you hear, use "catchwords" and fragments of sentences. These will be all you need to recall your thoughts when you wish to make use of them in a letter, in a school theme, in a debate, or in a speech. You can then fill out the sentences and put in the proper punctuation marks.

1 See Hawthorne, American Note-Books, October 25 [1836].

However, if your notes are to be preserved for any length of time, or if they are intended for the eye of another, as in your note-books in physics, in literature, or in history, you should bestow as much care and skill upon them as you do upon a well-constructed theme.1

Exercise 10

On three different days take a walk to some place that you are in the habit of resorting to; on the first day make a record in note form, as explained in Section 4, of all that you see that you think is worth setting down; on each of the succeeding days record in the same manner the things you had not previously seen. This is an exercise both in note-taking and in seeing things, and will help you to understand what is said in the section about gathering material by seeing things.

Exercise 11

1. Make a record, in note form, of the lesson assigned in each of your studies to-morrow. The lesson assigned in American Classics, for instance, may be something like this: "For to-morrow review to-day's lesson, especially the paragraph on pages 249-251, in which Lowell compares Lincoln with Henry IV. Write out and hand in an outline of this paragraph. Study carefully, and learn by heart, if you have the time, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address,

1 This distinction between rough, hastily written notes, mere accumulated and unorganized points for future composition, and a careful digest of well-organized material, that is, material already composed, cannot be too strongly emphasized. In this section, and in the exercises that follow, attention is centred on the first kind of note-taking because of the immediate bearing of this section on the sections that follow. See Exercise 15, especially 2.

pages 269-270, and read the account given of how Lincoln learned to write, pages 267-269." Your record may take the following form, a paragraph being given to the notes of each lesson:

LESSONS FOR TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15

In American Classics: Review pp. 249-251 — outline paragraph— study (memorize) pp. 269-270-read pp. 267-269.

In Algebra: etc.

2. Make a record, in note form, of what is said during the first ten or fifteen minutes of some recitation.

3. Take notes of some speech, lecture, or sermon. Try to get the speaker's main ideas, jotting down a word or two to recall his proofs or illustrations of these ideas; also set down the conclusion he comes to. Give your whole mind to his thought; if you try to take down his exact words, you will be lost. As soon after the speech as you have the time, write out in clear and connected language your report of the speech, filling in the proofs and illustrations as you remember them. Your final record (written for your town or city paper, say) may run to two or three hundred words, and should contain the substance of the speaker's remarks.

The notes you take while you are listening to a speech may be utterly unintelligible to any one but yourself; nevertheless, they will serve your purpose well enough if they help you to recall at the proper time the substance of what the speaker has said. They may even be as crude as these:

HINTS ON SPEECH-MAKING

Have something to say-something that must be said. Illustrations: Kinglake-men in legislature-town meetings-speeches that command most attention.

Always speak in a natural key-in a conversational manner. Illustrations: A Harvard dinner-device for getting easy tonenaturalness-boy sent to dancing-school-Tennyson quoted mark to neighbor at table.

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Never carry a scrap of paper before an audience. Illustrations: etc., etc.1

4. Take notes of some story or anecdote, if you are fortunate enough to hear a good one well told, and then write out your own version of it, not hesitating to improve upon the telling of the story — always keeping the truth and point of the narrative, however. Keep this practice up for a year or two, and you may become a good storyteller, an accomplishment that will bring profit to yourself and amusement to others. Our great Lincoln was a capital story-teller.

5. Bring your history and laboratory note-books to class (it is supposed that the teacher of composition has charge of the literature note-books), and talk over with your teacher the advisability of improving them in form and in clear and adequate expression. Remember that the records in these books, which are not intended for mere temporary use, should be made in your choicest language; you should use no "catch-words" and fragments of sentences here.

SECTION 5

How to Gather Material

1. BY SEEING

After you have selected your subject, and after you have properly limited and worded it, you should examine

1 You will find the essay from which these notes are taken in that admirable little book by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Hints on Writing and Speech-Making.

the contents of your mind, pretty much as a boy examines the contents of his pockets, to see what you have to give in trade for the interest of the reader. It may be that you will find as much of a jumble in your mind as the boy does in his pockets, but nevertheless keep thinking away at your subject, and, if you have chosen the right sort of subject, your ideas will soon begin to take definite shape, and the memories you had long ago stored up, and perhaps never since revived, will crowd pell-mell upon each other in their demand for expression, and your pencil will fall far behind in its race to keep abreast of your thoughts. The thoughts that come to you in this way are your best material, the material most easily found also, and the more you use of these first thoughts the more other people will be interested in what you write.

If, on the other hand, you have chosen a subject about which you have little first-hand knowledge, or if, as it sometimes happens, a subject has been assigned you about which you know nothing whatever, you will have to gather up what material you can find by one or all of three methods, — by seeing, by reading, and by thinking (that is, by thinking over the material you have gathered).

In gathering material by seeing, there are two rules to know and to practise: (1) Keep your eyes open to see things, and (2) keep your eyes on the things you see until you know what they are. These rules are easy enough to remember, but difficult indeed to practise. It is a curious fact that many people live their lives through without seeing things, and that most people live their lives through without seeing things well enough to know what they are.

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