of every word of certain books; there are books and books.

Remember that a book intends, most often at least, to represent some sort of a set of ideas. We should take this for granted anyhow, and make it our sole business as a student in reading the book to pick out these vital ideas. Since this essentially means comprehension, it is not surprisingly easy; yet it must be done, since nothing pedagogic will replace practice and careful training in this important matter. The young student at first reads or studies a book, equally, from the beginning to the end, putting the same amount of time and effort on each page. But the mind never works that way, outside of books! As we walked down the street yesterday looking in the attractive windows our minds did not spend so much time on some things along the way as on others; at camp, last summer, certain salient points made up our particular mental day, and no other camper's day as an unit was just like ours; each one's experience is unique; life is different for each human soul. Our mind's associations, our needs, our interests, and so on, should select what for us are the most salient points. Thus it is in reading. Francis Bacon

familiarly says, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be digested", and more and more, with the ever-swelling and boundless tide of published books, is this old dictum appropriate. We each buy a copy of the same elaborate book, printed from precisely the same types, yet your book is never like my book! It means more or less or differently to you than it means to me; and its meanings for its readers are itself. Your books are not my books, although they be materially identical. They are not the same simply because your mind is unlike mine. Thus it is that in every book there are many books for many minds. We should try always to get ours out of every book we read. We should learn in reading and studying to pick our own individual "book" out of a volume. In other words, we should learn to note the part that is for ourselves, and learn not to waste time on those parts of a book that are not for us, whether because familiar or incongruous.

Learn to read a book without reading on the average more than a quarter of it! Learn to get the meat out! With the enormous number of books that are of real importance, no other method in truth is feasible; for economical learning

nothing in the long run is more essential than this, the intensive, method. Learn to abstract, learn (as reviewers have to do) really to become familiar with the most of a book without undue loss of time! In my reviewing work, I learn the gist of many new and variously difficult books in the course of a year, but (save exciting detective stories or novels) I read every word of scarcely half a dozen. The training-road to this goal is abstracting a paragraph by a sentence and then a chapter by a page of notes and so on to the end. We should be careful not to write into our notes of a book our own ideas which have been suggested to us by the reading; this is a common bad habit of young students.

A few words as to periodical literature. To-day learning is slow and old-fashioned which does not include at least a few of the special technical magazines. Elementary study requires these as collateral reading; and advanced study requires them for advanced information and for integration, and to relate to ourselves the status of public opinion and taste.

The importance of bibliographies to students can scarcely be overestimated, because the knowledge of the name and title of a volume or of an article

is often the next-best thing to its actual possession. Knowledge of the available libraries is essential, and the proper way of using them is wholly necessary to the really progressive student. Next to really knowing a good book, is to know, first, that it exists, second where, and third, very often this is enough!

All these factors of book-use count not only in themselves, but also as indirect means of keeping the less conscious parts of the mind on its task of arranging and pushing your scholastic work.

CHAPTER V

IS YOUR "THINKER" IN ORDER?

THE ordinary supposition among educators as well as among the business-men of the world is that the "thinker" of the average student is not in order. This, we all "take" it, is one of the deepest of the objections to the present educational system that it does not teach students to think for themselves. A truly educated man knows how to think, and, moreover, he has the process habituated and, therefore, in easy action. It is said with truth that the present school system does not educate as yet in this sense at all. As a school-boy said to Sir Gilbert Parker, "I am sick of information; I'd like to think a bit, but I haven't time. It's stuff me with things I learn to-day and forget to-morrow. Compare with this remark of a gamin in London that of Professor John Dewey, of Columbia University:

"Any examination of the prevailing modes of