THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



memory, and in three months' time found no difficulty 

 in reciting from memory to my teacher, Mr. Taylor, in 

 each day's lesson, word by word, twenty printed pages, 

 after having read them over three times attentively. In 

 this way I committed to memory the whole of Gold- 

 smith's Vicar of Wakefield and Sir Walter Scott's 

 Ivanhoe. From over-excitement I slept but little, and 

 employed my sleepless hours at night in going over in 

 my mind what I had read on the preceding evening. 

 The memory being always much more concentrated at 

 night than in the day-time, I found these repetitions at 

 night of paramount use. Thus I succeeded in ac- 

 quiring in half a year a thorough knowledge of the 

 English language. 



"I then applied the same method to the study of 

 French, the difficulties of which I overcame likewise in 

 another six months. Of French authors I learned by 

 heart the whole of Fenelon's Adventures de Telemaque 

 and Bernardin de Saint Pierre's Paid et Virginie. This 

 unremitting study had in the course of a single year 

 strengthened my memory to such a degree that the 

 study of Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese ap- 

 peared very easy, and it did not take me more than 

 six weeks to write and speak each of these languages 

 fluently." 



Many a reader who has tried with indifferent suc- 

 cess to learn a language will admit, I suspect, on read- 

 ing this account, that he did not make what Schliemann 

 would have considered a serious effort. If you are 

 willing to work as Schliemann worked, perhaps you too 

 will discover that you have a genius for language. If 



[96] 



