326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It plays the same part as the language of action in the mother-tongue. 

 In thus conforming to the law of Nature, by which we pass from the 

 whole to its parts, this process saves the student from uncertainty and 

 ennui iu the understanding of authors, and he will naturally use it in 

 reading outside of his lessons. The promptitude with which the pu- 

 pil, by this method, seizes the thought of the author, gives an interest 

 to the reading which cannot be attained when the attention is arrested 

 on each word, and all connection of ideas destroyed by the use of a 

 dictionary. Besides, in this way the pupil reads more in a given time, 

 the same expressions recur oftener, and so are engraved upon the 

 memory. Progress in reading is in inverse ratio to the time taken. 

 For example, 100 pages translated at the rate of ten pages a day ad- 

 vances the student more in the art of reading than the same 100 

 pages read at the rate of one page a day. 



My first reading-books of English are formed on this plan. Com- 

 posed of anecdotes and familiar recitals that pique the curiosity, they 

 are, so to speak, practical vocabularies, of which all the words have a 

 determined meaning ; they address the understanding as well as the 

 memory. The reading again and again of the same passages impresses 

 the words, with their terminations, upon the mind with more certainty 

 than the mechanical learning by heart in grammars, vocabularies, 

 and phrase-books, of the current methods. 



Led by the interest of the subject, each sentence awakens a desire 

 to understand the next, and to pursue the reading, while nothing is 

 more fatiguing and discouraging than the work of reading discon- 

 nected phrases. The student will have only to read a few volumes 

 with the translation on the opposite page, before he can translate good 

 authors without this auxiliary. After this, the sense of the new words 

 he encounters will be easily discovered from the context, or by the aid 

 of the dictionary, and he will soon read the authors directly. From 

 this moment he will progress in all the other parts of the study. 



To free himself entirely from the translation, the student must 

 read the same passages many times : he then seizes the sense more 

 rapidly, and ideas associate themselves naturally with words. He 

 must, above all, read the entire work. In proportion as he advances 

 in reading a book, it becomes easier, while the same subject, the same 

 style, remaining longer under the attention, the phraseology of the 

 author will be more profoundly impressed on the mind, and will be 

 more closely linked to the thought. The stories of which the first 

 books of this method are composed belong to common language, and 

 contain the words and jmrases ordinarily employed, so that they famil- 

 iarize the student with the most useful elements of conversation and 

 correspondence. 



The facility with which a pupil reads and the rapidity of his prog- 

 ress permit him to read more in three months than in three years 

 by other methods. Those who object to this facility of work, con- 



