1 8681] Methods of Study 



said that I got more done than any other two men, 

 though I "never seemed to be busy." The truth is, 

 I learned very early to do my formal work in the 

 shortest possible time and to keep always ahead of 

 the class. Unfortunately I was always far-sighted, Far- 

 and though my vision in general was phenomenally '''^^'^^^ 

 good, it really involved eyestrains not realized for ^^" 

 many years, but a serious drawback at forty. After 

 I left college, bookwork by artificial light became 

 more and more trying, so that from the age of thirty- 

 five on I have been practically debarred from using 

 my eyes for night study. Indeed, for more than 

 thirty years my wife has helped me out by reading 

 aloud in the evenings, and still more by critical and 

 constructive work on manuscripts I have not been 

 able properly to revise. Such limitations are partly 

 responsible for my ability to skim ordinary English 

 and French books a page at a time and still get their 

 substance. (With German I never had the same 

 success, but the fault lies with its syntax and not 

 with me!) At the same time, although my reading 

 has been very wide both in science and in modern 

 history, narrower limits than I could have wished 

 have been set upon it. I am therefore thankful for 

 every piece of intensive study, in whatever line, 

 which I made before executive responsibilities were 

 thrown on me. 



During all my life my strongest mental power has Memory 

 been the ability to recall clear pictures of what I 

 have seen. I rarely forget a landscape, an animal, 

 or a flower, though among men I remember names 

 better than faces. The world I live in is a world 

 of details rather than of generalizations — which 



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