43 



Itill clerk will extend the totals of goods as quick as he can write them when the 

 number of articles or yards and the price are given. Some accountants will add 

 two or three columns at once almost as rapidly as he would read the same length 

 of printed words. 



When in school I was given the problem of running a railroad much in the 

 shape of a letter 8 through three given towns. After working four days on it 

 and late into the night I decided to give it up, and prepared to retire. My in- 

 struments and figures still lay spread out on the table, and as I passed the table 

 to hang up my coat unconsciously my eyes fell on the figures, and the solution 

 came to me instantly, and I solved it and drew the figures in less than a minute. 

 I do not believe I would ever have solved it if I had not given it up and thus 

 relieved my mind of the intense consciousness of the effort to solve it. 



When my father was a young man teaching school he had given his class a 

 long problem in partial payments. The class failed to solve it, and when he tried 

 it he failed also. Being unwilling to let them know he had failed, he worked on 

 it every spare moment for several days. One night he worked at it until late at 

 nighr, failed again, decided to give it up, and retired. In the night his mother 

 heard him marking on the slate in the dark room and asked him what he was 

 doing. He told her in his sleep he was trying to solve the problem. She let him 

 work on for some time, when he again retired. He did not waken until called 

 to breakfast the next moining, and when questioned in regard to the problem 

 said he had failed to solve it and had given it up for good. In the meantime his 

 mother had turned the slate over. His father insisted he should not give it up, 

 and induced him to try it again. He did so, working on the other side of the 

 slate, but he again failed. On turning the slate over they found he had solved 

 the problem correctly, covering the entire side of the slate with his work, in his 

 sleep and in a dark room, and yet remembered nothing of it and could not solve 

 it the next morning. This seems such a remarkable case that I thought it worthy 

 of giving to you as an illustration. 



My conclusions are that we are wasting much time in life witii simple mental 

 acts that should be done unconsciously, and our very consciousness often defeats 

 the effort. It seems to me we should spend more time learning hoir to think, and 

 in concentrating our mind on the matter in hand regardless entirely of all accom- 

 panying subjects or the result of our thought. If this be true the ''To learn to 

 do by doing" does not cover all, nor the most important, of the ground. 



