62 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



be destroyed completely in a few days, whereas, by mere 

 cut and try methods, as many weeks might be required 

 and in the meantime a transport ship and several of their 

 own cruisers might be lost. In this letter, the officer 

 went on to say that one particular year's work had meant 

 more to him in this work than all of the rest of his study ; 

 and this was a course in deciphering ancient Greek in- 

 scriptions which he had taken with this same Greek mas- 

 ter. 



Now, on first sight, ancient Greek inscriptions and mine 

 fields appear to lie at the very antipodes of unrelated- 

 ness. But it seems that this old teacher of Greek was ac- 

 customed to take the more advanced boys, who had their 

 Greek pretty well in hand, and set them to deciphering in- 

 scriptions in which endings, odd words, and even lines 

 were deleted. The pupils then were required with their 

 knowledge of Greek life and manners as a background, 

 and their knowledge of the language as a tool to decipher 

 the puzzle. They must then give good reasons for every 

 insertion which had been made. The result was that, far 

 from being a mere puzzle contest, where a premium was 

 put upon lucky guess work, the course developed habits 

 of independent thought and logical reasoning. "This 

 course", the officer said, "was of more value than all the 

 rest put together because it really made us think, and be- 

 side it the years spent on Latin, history, etc. were quite 

 wasted." He perhaps, however, did not stop to realize 

 that it was the mental discipline acquired in mastering 

 these other subjects which made this particular course 

 of value and that without the habits of thoroughness and 

 accuracy derived from them it could not have succeeded 

 in the first place. 



I have not given this illustration as an argument for the 

 immediate introduction of courses in deciphering Greek 

 inscriptions into our schools,, but rather to illustrate the 

 fact that in nine cases out of ten it is not the specific 

 things which, are studied, aside from the fundamentals, 

 so much as it is the ability to reason and think through 

 difficulties which is of most value in after life. 



Now I do not wish to be thought of as holding a brief 

 for the English Public School. It has its faults as has 



