Ordinary

any, completely out of sight. Only in such a perspective can the depth, the distance, the background, be realized. study is in one or two dimensions lines and planes, everything on a level. Real study is cubic, stereoscopic. It looks not only at things, but into and behind them. Every crude attempt to restate the text in one's own written or oral outline is of great value for this third dimension, this perspective. It is a lamentable confession of bad study when a student, called upon for the principal facts in the life of a great writer, rattles off the place and date of his birth, dwells on the details of primary education, names his earliest works, and then ends with vague generalities. Such recitations have led to the absurd notion that literary history and biography are immaterial to the study of literature. The real defect is in the student's inability to assimilate the vital things in a textbook. To organize, to relate the new to the old, the complex to the simple, the effect to the cause, is to assimilate knowledge. Anything short of this is cramming.

The last pro

3. Memorizing by association of ideas. cess in study is memorizing the right kind of memorizing. It is the direct and proper consequence of associating together the things that belong together. What do we mean by this? The question is best illustrated by an example. The textbook containing the chapter on the Tudor period, Cheyney's A Short History of England, happens to be illustrated. Let us see if the pictures can be made to serve our need, by giving us pegs to hang things on. Here is a facsimile from an early black-letter printed book. stand for Caxton, Erasmus, More and his Utopia, the new learning of the Renaissance. Here is a drawing of Hampton

Court;

let that stand for Henry and Wolsey,

"Had I but served my God with half the zeal

I served my king,'

Let that

and the downfall of Wolsey suggests the royal divorce, the breach with Rome. Let an open Bible be the symbol of

Tyndale and Coverdale (reign of Henry VIII), Cranmer and the Prayer Book (reign of Edward VI), and the Oxford martyrs of the Catholic reaction (reign of Mary); and let the broken arches of St. Mary's Abbey at York, with its

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Bare, ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang, stand for the suppression of the monasteries, with all that step involved. Here we have our formula again: a free mind, a free spirit, a free state. Two open books, secular and sacred; two buildings, secular and sacred, one representing the downfall of the last great prince of the English church, the other the downfall of that church itself in its medieval aspect. Such a scheme, however fanciful, is a legitimate aid to memorizing if it be original, not borrowed, because it is based on the student's association of ideas.

How about dates? Shall they be learned at all? A few dates are useful both in history and in literature as pegs to hang ideas on. A student of literature might find it of advantage to know that Caxton's edition of Morte d'Arthur appeared in the first year of Henry VII's reign, 1485, and Tyndale's New Testament just forty years later, 1525. One may choose a single date for the English Reformation; whether it shall be the royal divorce and the Act of Appeals (1533), or the final dissolution of the monasteries (1540) depends on the emphasis of one's study. If we date the open pages of our imaginary Caxton book 1485, for Morte d'Arthur, our open Bible 1525, for Tyndale's Testament, our picture of Hampton Court 1529, for Wolsey's fall, and our ruined abbey 1540, for the destruction of the monasteries, we shall have the whole chapter in miniature. Of course, this particular method of association with pictures would very likely be unsuitable for some other chapter. Frequently a series of alliterative catchwords will serve, provided the words really suggest the essential ideas of the text. The more closely one's general division of a passage follows the real relation of the several parts, the easier will it be to fix the subject in mind.

The proper kind of memorizing is indispensable to study. For most persons memorizing is dependent on visualized association, on mental pictures of words in their relation to other words on the page. "I don't know what it is, but it is on a left-hand page near the bottom," we confess to ourselves about many a piece of forgotten knowledge, more or less valuable. Memory quacks strive to substitute for these foolish and treacherous place-associations equally foolish alphabetical and numerical associations, by which we may retain innumerable useless names and dates of unknown things. To go to the other extreme by ignoring memory in study is one of the many follies of a certain kind of modern education. "All the intellectual value for us of a state of mind depends on our after-memory of it," says Professor James, quoted by McMurry. To neglect this final stage in study is like the act of the child who roams unwearied across many fields to pluck the brightest flowers, and then drops them all in the road on his way home. He knows that he had them once, and that there are more where they came from. As for carrying them the rest of the way, he is tired. "I studied the lesson two hours," says the student (notice the name': student, one who is devoting himself to study as a business); "but I can't recall a word of it now." Surely for such persons education is non-productive labor. To study is to win and to keep; to understand and to remember; to master and to use.

CHAPTER VI

RECITATION

C'est une grande misère que de n'avoir pas assez d'esprit pour bien parler, ni assez de jugement pour se taire.

LA BRUYÈRE.

It is a great pity to have neither brains enough to talk well nor sense enough to keep quiet.

Recitation is exposition.

Knowledge acquired by the study of textbooks has many ultimate and permanent uses, which are summed up in what we call discipline and culture. It trains and enriches the mind; makes the mind stronger, and furnishes it with material to work upon. At first, however, the most practical use of it is in the recitation. Both oral and written recitation (examination) are a special kind of exposition. They differ from ordinary exposition such as is found in themewriting and oral composition in that the subject is more narrowly limited by the instructor's question. A student may choose his topic for an ordinary exposition from a list of five or twenty, and he has some days to prepare it. In the recitation he has no choice of topic and no time to consider a method of treating it. That is the only difference. In both cases the principles of unity, coherence, and emphasis apply. In both, it is demanded that every subject shall have a predicate, and every sentence a beginning and an end. In both, the essential things are clearness and correctness. In both, the object is to communicate C's thought in A's understanding of it to B's mind.

The topical recitation. - This kinship between the recitation and the composition class is most evident in those subjects which permit or demand the so-called topical recitation. In this sort of recitation a student is called on to present a topic

without continual prodding by the instructor's questions.

cease.

He

is expected to stand, to announce his topic as the subject of a grammatically complete sentence, and to speak in real sentences and paragraphs for two or three minutes, or until permitted to Nobody breaks the silence when he stumbles and flounders. Nobody breaks in, encouragingly or critically, with a word to set him right. Nobody smiles or frowns - at least, nobody is supposed to. He simply talks till he gets through, or thinks he has got through, or knows that he never can get through. That is all. Then comes the verdict. Such recitations are not common in freshman courses; the rhetoric teacher might have an easier time of it if they were. Ordinarily neither the subjects studied nor the maturity and experience of the class allow of such a use of precious time. It is in upperclass courses that the topical recitation flourishes. There the student who has already learned to think on his feet, to frame sentences extempore without breaking their backs, has a marked advantage. But while extended topical recitation is not largely practiced in the freshman year, much preparation may be made for it by care in the recitations of the ordinary “quiz." The first step in answering a question: a moment of silent thought. In the "quiz" every recitation is a reply. For some unknown reason nearly every such reply in the college classroom begins with the adverb why. The word is pronounced in two syllables, in a slow, doubtful drawl, thus: Why-y-y-a." It may be called the dubitative adverb, and seems to signify that the speaker is endeavoring to collect his wits. Of course if a student needs to vocalize his doubts, the sound "why-a" will do as well as any other. But why not keep one's mouth shut until thought arrives? A judicious silence is often the best way to begin a recitation. But this silence will not be a dumb, hypnotic daze; it will be a moment when the brain is as busy as it knows how to be.

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The second step: begin with a grammatical subject. After the instant required to collect one's thoughts, the first