760 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPEDIA. 



and thorough search and is finally obliged to " give up in despair." The 

 reasons why he should do so are : He might have made the error in mak- 

 ing change ; or, in paying an account and not charging the person ; or, in 

 paying a person more than he charged them. 



SHORT CALCULATION. 



ADDITION. 



859. In adding a column of figures you should learn to do it without 

 mental labour ; and, this may be acquired by any one with a little prac- 

 tice. The art is acquired by learning to read a column of figures as you 

 would a sentence in prose. By practice you have become so familiar with 

 letters that when you see a group of them together it is not necessary for 

 youj^to stop and separate the letters, but you can tell at a glance what the 

 word is. By practice you may become so familiar with figures that when 

 you see a group of them you can tell at a glance what the sum of them is. 

 In practicing the reading of a column of figures in this way, do not let 

 your brain work at all, but simply pass your eyes over the figures as if 

 you were reading a sentence, not reading too slowly, and you will your- 

 self be surprised to find how readily you may acquire the art. First, be- 

 gin with practicing on two figures, then on three, four, five and so on, un- 

 til finally you will become able to write the sum total of a whole column 

 without once having thought of an amount until you have the entire pro- 

 duct. For example : When you see, one above the other, the following fig- 

 ures, 9, 9, 5, 5, you know at a glance that the sum is 28. The reading of 

 a column of figures, as in the reading of a sentence, is done by dividing a 

 large group of figures into smaller groups, and from group to group read- 

 ing through a column the same as from word to word we read through a 

 sentence. Another example : 9, 6, 4, 2, 8, in this, we group the last four 

 figures, and by taking them all into our eye at once, we see that the sum of 

 them is 29, then we have but to say 20-9 or 29. The expert in addition 

 will skip around " here, there and everywhere " in order to do this group- 

 ing, and will sometimes go back to the beginning of a column to pick up 

 a stray figure that he had left behind. 



In finding the sum total of several long columns of figures, it is well to 

 set down one under the other, the total of each column ; then, after the 

 sum total of the last column at the left has been found, the grand total or 

 product will be the sum total of the extreme left hand column, with the 



