A STUDY IN RACE PSYCHOLOGY. 355 



nate. At the time of my experiments lie was sixteen years old, 

 and had been regularly at school since his tenth year that is, for . 

 five years and irregularly from his seventh to his tenth inclu- 

 sive. He could read the Third Reader in a monotonous, stum- 

 bling way, perform simple operations in arithmetic quite rapidly, 

 and write an excellent hand. As he was in my service, I thought 

 it my duty to keep up his education, and, undismayed by many 

 futile efforts with his predecessors in the place, I began daily 

 reading exercises with him. Of necessity, the Third Reader does 

 not interest a boy of sixteen, and, interest being the essential spur 

 to acquisition, I tried the newspaper. Every day I selected some 

 local occurrence which excited his mind, and by talking it over 

 with him and explaining the new words endeavored to give him 

 the mastery of the printed account. By this means the limita- 

 tions of his vocabulary were soon apparent. It stopped with the 

 names of familiar objects or of actions possible to himself. Out- 

 side of that range he never caught at new words as white chil- 

 dren do, nor did they excite his curiosity even when the context 

 was interesting. To illustrate : Here is a short list of words, 

 no one of which conveyed any meaning to his mind testify, 

 drought, witness, apparent, fulfill. These all occurred in an ac- 

 count of the Knox fire, a local event which excited him greatly. 

 We read the matter several times in slightly different forms, and 

 I dwelt upon each of the strange words, giving familiar illus- 

 trations of their uses, but the very interest that he felt in the 

 event about which we were reading seemed to interfere with his 

 grasping these particulars. I think his mind never got beyond 

 the general impression that the fire and the ruin as he saw it 

 were described in the paper. His mental state, as it was revealed 

 to me through his reading, might be described as unanalyzed 

 content. Eager to get the true measure of his verbal power, I 

 applied the familiar test of instantaneous associations with a 

 given list of words. I submit the best results that I obtained 

 after repeated experiments with varied lists : 



CONCRETE TERMS. 



Associated Ideas. Words. Associated Ideas. 



Pole North. Vase Blue. 



Book Black. Hat White. 



Pencil Lead. Horse Brown. 



Paper Reading. Bear Grizzly. 



Fire Place. Processiou. .. .Street. 



I had great difficulty in finding abstract terms which excited 

 any response, but finally secured the following : 



