146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



reading follow your bent. Deal with poetry or essays, with history or 

 science, with philosophy or art, as may best suit your fancy. Make 

 yourself an authority on some particular author or cluster of authors, 

 or upon the literature of a race or of a century. In a case of this sort 

 the cautions to be observed are: Keep your reading unitary and sys- 

 tematic, and do not try to cover too much ground. If you have no 

 bent, read history and biography. 



One means, then, to the utilizing of opportunities for reading is: 

 Hoard, miserly, your minutes; and another is: Choose carefully your 

 matter. We now go on to speak of a third means, and it is : Method- 

 ically digest and conserve; methodically conserve and digest. Either 

 form of phrasing the rule is correct, for we conserve our mental attain- 

 ments by digesting them and we digest them by conserving. 



Many people read vastly, yet never have much to show for it, be- 

 cause they trust to interest and memory to retain what ought to stay 

 with them, using no method for assisting memory. It is a great mis- 

 take. Memory is invaluable, of course, and should be hard worked. 

 The exercise of piling up in one's memory nuggets of literary gold can 

 not be commended too highly. Still, the reader who employs no 

 mnemonic apparatus, no mechanism, no ways and means for supple- 

 menting memory work, is an intellectual prodigal. What means or 

 contrivances can be suggested for conserving and digesting the useful 

 matter with which reading supplies the mind? 



We must learn to assort as we read, to attend to what has meaning 

 for us and pass lightly over the rest. " Some books," says Bacon, " are 

 to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and 

 digested." Few books are worth reading word for word. Much can 

 be skipped without loss. Many a good book is of such a character that 

 if you begin by carefully perusing the preface and table of contents, 

 so as to discover the author's train of thought, you can read the rest at 

 the average rate of three or four pages per minute. This reading at a 

 gallop is a knack into which one grows by long practise. You gradu- 

 ally acquire a feeling for what you want and fix the mind on that alone. 

 Thought is thus freer to master " for keeps " the passages deserving 

 this, which is as important as the ignoring of the rest. The question, 

 " Understandest thou, then, what thou readest ? " is as pertinent as it 

 is old. 



Take notes in reading, partly to fix attention, helping you recall in 

 general what you may never need or care to recall in detail, and partly 

 to make fast for future consultation the matters which most forcibly 

 impress you. No one can tell you, and you can not prescribe to your- 

 self, when, upon what occasion, upon what sort of a passage to take a 

 note. Feeling, prescience, second sight, must guide. Many data that 

 you put down will never seem to profit you, but the note-taking may be 



