LB 
 
 1065 
 
 A3 
 
 1895 
 
 MAIN 
 
 IODS OF MIND-TRAINING 
 
 ^ 
 

METHODS OF MIND-TRAINING 
 
 CONCENTRATED ATTENTION 
 
 AND 
 
 MEMORY 
 
 BY 
 
 CATHARINE AIKEN 
 
 "Attention is the stuff that memory is made o/, 
 and memory is accumulated genius." 
 
 JAMKS RUBSKI.L LOWELT, 
 
 NEW YORK : CINCINNATI : CHICAGO 
 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & B BOTH KB 
 
 All rigktt retervect. 
 W. P. 2 
 
 
A3 
 
 TO 
 MY GIRLS 
 
 WHO THROUGH EARNESTNESS AND ATTENTION 
 HAVE BEEN MY INSPIRATION 
 
 ; 05425 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OUAP. PAOB 
 
 INTRODUCTION 8 
 
 I. OBJECT OF THE SYSTEM 17 
 
 II. THE SYSTEM EXPLAINED 28 
 
 III. ATTENTION AND MEMORY 46 
 
 IV. TO TEACHERS* 61 
 
 CONCLUSION 74 
 
 APPENDIX . . . 79 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 No. 1 Exercise for quick perception 
 
 and attention Facing page 18 
 
 No. 2 Exercise for rapidity and accu- 
 racy in sight-reading " " 24 
 
 No. 3 Exercise for accuracy in dis- 
 criminating " " 30 
 
 No. 4 Exercise for unconscious 
 
 counting " " 36 
 
 No. 6 Exercise for accuracy in re- 
 calling objects in their places, and 
 in their relation to other objects . " " 42 
 
 No. 6 Glance -work from revolving 
 
 blackboard " " 48 
 
 No. 7 Eight examples from second 
 
 figure in No. 6 ........ " " 54 
 
 No. 8 Tile patterns " " 58 
 
 No. 9 Glance-work from objects . . " " 64 
 
 No. 10 Time sketches . , . " " 70 
 
MIND -TRAINING 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I AM often asked why I was led to 
 change the methods of teaching which 
 I had pursued with more or less suc- 
 cess for thirty years. 
 
 Rather should the question be why 
 I had adopted a method at all after so 
 many years of teaching without any ; 
 for, in common with many others of 
 my profession, my teaching had lacked 
 method. 
 
 In order that the motive for adopt- 
 ing a different course may be better 
 understood, it is needful to consider 
 some of the causes which had pro- 
 duced in my mind serious dissatisfac- 
 tion with the customary school work 
 and its results. 
 
 Some one has written that "the 
 
way to perfection is through a series 
 of disgusts." To limit this assertion, 
 and apply it to my own experience, I 
 may say that, though far from reach- 
 ing perfection, my way to a quicker 
 and broader developing of the minds 
 of my pupils was through a series of 
 dissatisfactions. It had long been made 
 plain to me that there was much in the 
 processes of teaching and of gaining 
 knowledge that failed of reaching suc- 
 cessful ends. 
 
 A thorough acquaintance with the 
 pupils of many schools showed me that 
 a great disparity between labor and 
 gain characterized our system of edu- 
 cation. That the evil exists no less in 
 the schools of Great Britain than in 
 those of our own country is true, but 
 with greater hope of reform, since the 
 fact is recognized by the most eminent 
 English educators. Says John Stuart 
 Blackie : " In no department of human 
 activity (as in English teaching) is there 
 such a pretentious display of power 
 
with such a beggarly account of re- 
 sults." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, in referring to the 
 subject, calls the results " scandalously 
 small," and uses Goldsmith to say, 
 
 " They learn but little here below; 
 And learn that little ill." 
 
 That the teacher's task in these days 
 of extravagant demands presents many 
 discouragements admits of no denial. 
 The varied and multiplied subjects which 
 the study of the sciences includes, the 
 practical importance which art in its 
 different branches has assumed, the vast 
 amount of history and literature which 
 has accumulated, and, which is by no 
 means least in the account, the high 
 standard of musical attainment, render 
 it difficult, if not hopeless, to educate a 
 girl by the ordinary methods so that 
 she shall be able to meet the require- 
 ments of her position with even a fair 
 degree of intelligence and ability. Is 
 it not plain, in order that the student 
 
shall obtain the power and intelligence 
 that is expected, in view of her so-called 
 advantages, that either the years spent 
 at school must be extended, or some 
 more efficient aid in the acquisition of 
 knowledge must be employed? As to 
 the former, every teacher of private 
 schools knows that no more time will 
 be allowed. The years granted to the 
 school-girl are grudgingly given, and 
 often from these much time is pilfered 
 by social distractions. 
 
 According to the usual plan of study, 
 the conscientious scholar will have spent 
 from six to eight hours each day, for 
 at least five days in the week, for three- 
 fourths of the year, during twelve or 
 thirteen years, in laborious mental oc- 
 cupation. In pursuing the English 
 branches alone she will have "gone 
 through " fifty or more text-books, em- 
 bracing the subjects taught generations 
 ago, and also many new works upon 
 modern science, art, history, political 
 economy, literature, and philosophy, 
 
held out. It was not that school-books 
 were not gone through and every ques- 
 tion in the book faithfully asked and 
 answered. Occasionally there were ex- 
 ceptional teachers to be met so pre- 
 sumptuous as to propound a question 
 which was not in the book, or to ask 
 for the reason of some glibly stated 
 answer. This departure was looked 
 upon by the ever- watchful scholar as 
 rather an unfair proceeding, and the 
 questions of the erratic teacher, like 
 the too-personal interrogatories of the 
 preacher, savored very much of taking 
 advantage of the situation. 
 
 I remember well an incident in my 
 early experience as a teacher which il- 
 lustrates the feeling which then existed 
 in the minds of pupils in regard to the 
 customary methods of teaching. Among 
 my scholars was a lad who, in common 
 with others, had been accustomed to 
 learn his lessons and recite them in the 
 orthodox fashion of question and answer 
 in their regular order. One day he 
 
10 
 
 went home from school in a very 
 angry mood. When questioned as to 
 the cause of his unhappy state of mind, 
 he exclaimed, with great feeling, " I 
 never want to go to school to her again 
 as long as I live ! She teaches more 
 than she knows. To-day she asked me 
 questions that were not in the book, 
 and I can't stand it any longer, and, 
 what is more, I do not believe she could 
 answer them herself !" And in this he 
 was probably right, for even then to 
 impart knowledge was not my only aim. 
 
 And here I may venture to assert my 
 belief that all teachers may be divided 
 into two classes : those who can teach 
 more than they know, and those who 
 cannot teach as much as they know ; 
 the former are the more successful. 
 
 By the word teaching as here used I 
 do not mean merely giving instruction, 
 but rather the asking of questions which 
 the teacher may not be fully able to 
 answer, but such as will awaken in the 
 mind of the scholar a discriminating 
 
11 
 
 activity, that will tend to enlarge the 
 understanding to a greater degree than 
 the precise question of the more learned 
 instructor and the correct answer learn- 
 ed by heart and not by head. 
 
 But my greatest cause for dissatisfac- 
 tion was in this : that the prevailing 
 mode of teaching did not train the fac- 
 ulties of the pupil, after all. I had no 
 special cause for complaint in that my 
 pupils did not study diligently ; but 
 when I took account of the mental 
 stock, not to speak of the general knowl- 
 edge, which the average girl of eighteen 
 years has laid up, with which to enter 
 into the business of life for herself, I 
 felt that she would either be compelled 
 to suspend until experience came to her 
 aid, or fail altogether. Surely there 
 was no lack of indefatigable instructors, 
 profound professors, and learned lectur- 
 ers, while the fact remained that the 
 girl left school without having formed 
 habits of attention, accurate observation, 
 and discrimination, or gained power 
 
12 
 
 for logical thought and comprehensive 
 study, and if she knew her own empti- 
 ness, might exclaim, after the manner of 
 Paul, "And though I have all knowl- 
 edge and have no mental power that I 
 can call my own, I am nothing." 
 
 In the gloom of this conviction which 
 constantly oppressed me, I was, at times, 
 almost ready to cry out with the retir- 
 ing pedagogue, 
 
 "Ere I would wear my soul away 
 In pain where each succeeding day 
 
 But beggars that before, 
 Wood I would hew, and water draw, 
 Make brick in full tale without straw, 
 
 As Israel did of yore." 
 
 It was in the endeavor to find a bet- 
 ter way for the developing of youthful 
 minds than the text-books afforded that 
 my mind was continually exercised. I 
 often asked myself, " What is wanting 
 that teachers and text -books do not 
 supply?" 
 
 The best answer which I have found 
 
13 
 
 to this perplexing question came to me 
 in a very peculiar and unexpected 
 manner. 
 
 It has been said, " A child shall lead 
 them," and in this instance it was liter- 
 ally true, for in more senses than one it 
 was a child who led me to catch a 
 glimpse of the better way for which I 
 had sought so earnestly. Some small 
 friends had begged me to take them to 
 the circus which was exhibiting in the 
 town where I had been teaching, and I 
 consented somewhat reluctantly. While 
 watching various acrobatic feats, my at- 
 tention was particularly drawn to a 
 Japanese lad of but a few years, who 
 was walking a tight-rope ; the rope was 
 stretched at a height that made the feat 
 extremely dangerous a single misstep 
 as he balanced himself in mid-air would 
 have proved wellnigh fatal. Another 
 lad also attracted my attention and 
 filled me with amazement by his skill 
 and agility in rapidly tossing up and 
 catching sharp-bladed knives. 
 
14 
 
 What was it which enabled each to 
 perform his dangerous feat without fal- 
 tering or mistake ? The answer was to 
 be found in the fact that fear had caused 
 them to rivet their attention upon their 
 tasks absolutely, so that they were ut- 
 terly oblivious to all else. 
 
 This exhibition of the possibilities of 
 concentrated attention as exemplified 
 by the Japanese boys impressed itself 
 upon my mind with peculiar force. 
 
 It was then I realized the value of a 
 mental power which would aid me to 
 train the mind to a greater degree of 
 attention if another incentive than fear 
 could be used. In casting about for 
 some other urgency than that of fear, as 
 in the case of the Japanese lads, I found 
 that innate curiosity which is shared in 
 a greater or less degree by all, ambition, 
 and a desire to excel would serve to 
 stimulate the mental activities and con- 
 centrate the attention. These emo- 
 tional states and tendencies, together 
 with association, while none or all of 
 
15 
 
 them would create attention, would fur- 
 nish the work of directing and holding 
 the attention. 
 
 Thus out of an accidental discovery 
 has grown the system which may be 
 characterized as means to an end. This 
 I have used with good results in my 
 own school, and of this system I shall 
 treat in the following pages. 
 
 It is Darwin who says, "When an 
 animal trainer desires to select monkeys 
 for training, he will take a number of 
 them, range them about him, and then 
 attempt to attract their attention by 
 various performances. Those whose at- 
 tention cannot be secured are cast out 
 as unfit for training." 
 
 Whether it is a case of the survival 
 of the fittest or not we do not propose 
 to discuss, but it is true that in the sys- 
 tem of exercises which I have formu- 
 lated all of the pupils, without exception, 
 acquire very quickly the habit of atten- 
 tion, a habit upon which too strong an 
 emphasis cannot be placed. 
 
16 
 
 Sometimes visitors to the school, when 
 they have witnessed the training exer- 
 cises and observed the rapt attention of 
 my scholars, and how quickly they have 
 perceived what was in my mind, have 
 suggested animal magnetism, hypno- 
 tism, and other isms; but there is no 
 mysterious or hidden influence at work 
 between us : it is a wholly natural in- 
 teraction that the pupil's mind takes on 
 simply a form of mental action, the 
 natural result of being led daily in the 
 same direction and through the same 
 mental experience. 
 
 In closing this introduction, I wish to 
 state that this book is not intended to 
 be a treatise on psychology, but rather 
 the history of a practical method of 
 applying psychological principles, espe- 
 cially those which apply directly to the 
 subjects of attention and memory. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 OBJECT OF THE SYSTEM 
 
 THE ability to concentrate the atten- 
 tion is of inestimable value. 
 
 A great educator has said, " The pow- 
 er of attention constitutes a striking 
 difference between the trained and the 
 untrained intellect." The most super- 
 ficial observer will be ready to admit 
 that he who possesses the ability to 
 concentrate his attention at will, wheth- 
 er his task be the learning of a trade or 
 profession, the solving of a mathemat- 
 ical problem, the finding of a logical 
 sequence by means of a chain of ab- 
 struse reasoning, or the tracing of ef- 
 fects to their causes, physical or meta- 
 physical, will sooner and more satis- 
 factorily reach success than he who, 
 
18 
 
 though possessed of more skill and learn- 
 ing, fails to fix his attention upon his 
 subject. 
 
 How important it is, then, that this 
 power should be acquired when young, 
 and that the youthful student should 
 secure it in some degree while making 
 his first attempts at learning. 
 
 Here, then, is the important work of 
 the teacher. It is in the school -room 
 that these habits of attention should be 
 formed. 
 
 Experience has convinced me that 
 the chief factor in the obtaining of 
 knowledge, in school or out of school, 
 is the ability to concentrate the atten- 
 tion to such a degree as to insure a 
 retentive memory. As so many, things 
 are to be learned arbitrarily, a system 
 which strives to secure the ability of con- 
 centrating the attention and strength- 
 ening the memory must prove invalu- 
 able. 
 
 By means of this important agency 
 the use of the reasoning powers will be 
 
No. 1 Exercise for quick perception and attention 
 
19 
 
 greatly facilitated, because less ham- 
 pered by the difficulty of acquiring and 
 retaining the necessary technical knowl- 
 edge by means of which the thinker will 
 be enabled to hold the conditions more 
 firmly fixed in the mind while tracing 
 the question to its logical conclusion. 
 
 To a class which has been trained to 
 listen with steadiness of attention, there 
 is a large amount of information which 
 the teacher may give either from her 
 own resources or from books, and be 
 able to impart a broader intelligence 
 than the average pupil would gain by 
 study. 
 
 If the teacher be an effective reader, 
 a requisite not to be overlooked, she 
 will make clear by inflection and em- 
 phasis the meaning, which might other- 
 wise be obscure, and impress it upon 
 the minds of her listeners, who, having 
 attained a good degree of mental activ- 
 ity and the habit of attention, will be 
 able to state clearly and accurately what 
 they have heard, or to write an intelli- 
 
20 
 
 gent synopsis of the same. The scien- 
 tific studies, with their countless classi- 
 fications and technical words, may be 
 quickly learned when heard from the 
 teacher's lips, and thus the way will be 
 better prepared for intelligent study, at 
 a cost of far less time and effort than 
 when set to the task of committing to 
 memory. Botany, Natural History, 
 Mineralogy, Geology, and other studies 
 drawn from the realm of nature, may 
 be successfully taught in a class well 
 trained to listen, with little need of text- 
 books except for reference or for read- 
 ing ; teacher and pupils alike making 
 their own researches and observations, 
 and sharing the results with pleasure 
 and satisfaction. 
 
 The problems of the higher Mathe- 
 matics, Physics, Astronomy, and other 
 studies, will be made easier to compre- 
 hend when the mind is able to concen- 
 trate all its powers upon the conditions 
 of the problem, the relations of each 
 part to the whole, and of causes to ef- 
 
21 
 
 fects. The distaste for these studies so 
 common among girls is, I believe, large- 
 ly due to a lack of mental preparation. 
 The unsuccessful student has not been 
 trained to hold the mind steady long 
 enough at once to compass the condi- 
 tions and meaning of the question, and 
 therefore becomes easily discouraged 
 because of the limitations of her un- 
 trained mind; hence, the school -girl's 
 " I can't " is often an honest avowal of 
 her lack of ability, and the teacher's 
 " Try again " is of no avail. It would be 
 thought a strangely absurd thing to ex- 
 pect an unskilled mechanic to produce 
 a piece of intricate and useful work- 
 manship without a thorough knowledge 
 of the use of his tools and of the ma- 
 chinery necessary for its construction. 
 It is true he might, after many unsuc- 
 cessful attempts and much expenditure 
 of time, discover the uses of the imple- 
 ments at hand, and after a long trial 
 be able to present the completed work. 
 More unreasonable is the exaction made 
 
22 
 
 of the untrained student that she shall 
 comprehend and learn long and difficult 
 lessons without the best use of her men- 
 tal faculties. This is often done at the 
 expense of health, so much time being 
 necessary to compensate, even to some 
 small degree, for lack of concentrated 
 attention that none remains for recre- 
 ation and rest. 
 
 The question naturally arises, "What, 
 then, are the means to be used to culti- 
 vate the habit of concentrating the at- 
 tention ?" In other words, " What shall 
 be the process of training which will 
 secure this end ?" 
 
 It is the purpose of this book to an- 
 swer this question so far as it has been 
 met, in my own experience as a teach- 
 '-N er, while striving to assist my pupils 
 to acquire this important educative 
 force. 
 
 The answer would undoubtedly be 
 
 the means of saving the student a vast 
 
 A amount of mental drudgery and fatigue, 
 
 and of securing much time which is too 
 
23 
 
 often wasted in the miscalled study 
 hours. 
 
 It now becomes necessary to say a 
 few words concerning the principles of 
 attention. 
 
 Voluntary attention, we find, is a re- 
 sult of the cultivation of spontaneous 
 attention along certain prescribed lines. 
 It is an acquired power or state of men- 
 tal steadiness, usually attained by habit. 
 
 In a durable form it is a difficult state 
 to sustain, and usually extraneous aid is 
 needed. 
 
 It has been found that the motive 
 necessary for the production of volun- 
 tary attention is best induced and con- 
 tinued by the use of certain emotional 
 states, such as fear, innate curiosity, 
 emulation, and desire to excel. A sys- 
 tem which recognizes the importance of 
 this mental training as a thing distinct 
 from methods of teaching, and as a nec- 
 essary part of the teacher's work, is the 
 subject under consideration. 
 
 It was with a view to arousing the 
 
24 
 
 mental activities, keeping the mind on 
 the alert, and holding the attention 
 steadily, that I formulated certain ex- 
 ercises which placed the mind in the 
 same mental attitude for a short time 
 each day. The result was that a habit 
 of voluntary attention was formed, and 
 thus I had secured to a considerable de- 
 gree the end I had so assiduously sought. 
 
 The process of development which I 
 marked out for my own use for quicken- 
 ing the mental activities was as follows : 
 
 First, to quicken the perceptive facul- 
 ties; second, to cultivate the habit of 
 accuracy in seeing and hearing ; and 
 third, to discriminate by immediately 
 observing similarities, differences, and 
 relations, remembering always that at- 
 tention was the underlying condition 
 for the proper development of these 
 functions of the mind. 
 
 Quickness of perception will lead to 
 the power of observation, so essential 
 to the student of the sciences in collect- 
 ing, sorting, arranging, and classifying. 
 
No. 2 Exercise for rapidity and accuracy in sight- 
 reading 
 
25 
 
 This faculty of perception, when 
 highly developed, will lead the mind 
 to reach conclusions rapidly. 
 
 Nathaniel Bowditch said that in 
 studying the Mecanique Celeste he be- 
 came discouraged by the frequent re- 
 currence of the word " obviously." The 
 perfectly trained mind of La Place had 
 by one great mental leap, the result of 
 marvellously trained perceptive powers, 
 attained the inference which cost Bow- 
 ditch long hours of wearisome labor to 
 reach. 
 
 The power to recognize in one rapid 
 glance the familiar principle and the 
 process by which the results are to be 
 obtained, so that these stand out to the 
 mind " obviously," as a basis of continu- 
 ous work, is, I believe, to be secured in 
 a very helpful degree through direct 
 training, the distinct end of which 
 should be the highest development of 
 the perceptive faculty. A necessary 
 consideration, and one to be strongly 
 emphasized in the training of the per- 
 
26 
 
 ceptive faculty, is that of insisting upon 
 a habit of accuracy in seeing and hear- 
 ing. 
 
 The usefulness of this habit is being 
 universally recognized. I shall confine 
 myself to its application to school-room 
 work. I will only state, in passing, that 
 the attainment of the habit of quick 
 perception will make all the life occu- 
 pations easier and better ; the want of 
 which is sometimes expressed as the in- 
 ability to " take in " the situation. Fol- 
 lowing the training to quick perception 
 should be the training to accurate dis- 
 crimination. This is more complex in 
 its nature, involving, as it does, think- 
 ing and remembering until clear recog- 
 nition takes place. The cultivation of 
 the power of distinct discrimination, 
 leading the mind to notice likeness- 
 es and differences and to think, accus- 
 toms it to perceive things and their 
 relations to each other with a full 
 recognition. 
 
 Thus these forms of experience, as 
 
perception, attention, discrimination, re- 
 membering, etc., while they depend upon 
 each other as facts of psychology, may 
 be made of inestimable value to the 
 pupil when developed, each, in turn, as 
 a means to an end. 
 
 As I have said before, this is not a 
 psychological treatise. It is intended 
 to comprehend no more than the prac- 
 tical consideration of a few of the 
 foundation facts which psychology 
 studies, and which are most essential 
 in the cultivation of the mind. The 
 word " faculties " I have used only as 
 some of those special modes of the 
 mind's activities which, although com- 
 plex, are capable of particular develop- 
 ment by means of mental training. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE SYSTEM EXPLAINED 
 
 INNATE curiosity, which, as Eibot has 
 said, seems to be the appetite of intelli- 
 gence, was the motive to which I first 
 appealed through the sense of sight. 
 This motive suggested the use of the 
 swinging blackboard. At first the ex- 
 periments were tested, not upon the in- 
 dividual mind, but upon the minds of 
 the entire school acting together tow- 
 ards one end. An intensit}^ of interest 
 was thus secured by means of that 
 wondrous element of success, the con- 
 tagion of enthusiasm. But curiosity 
 soon grew into interested attention. 
 A column of figures consisting of units, 
 tens, and hundreds was placed upon the 
 reversed side of the blackboard, which 
 
29 
 
 was quickly revolved. The figures were 
 easily recognized in their order, as : 
 
 300 
 29 
 
 100 
 
 When the ability to recognize a few 
 numbers at a single glance had been 
 attained, a longer column, as shown 
 in cut No. 1, was easily mastered. 
 When the habit of quick perception 
 had been in a measure secured, the 
 same means were used to form a habit 
 equally useful but more difficult to ac- 
 quire : that of holding the mind steady 
 while retaining these figures in their 
 order. Pupils were required, after a 
 single glance at the figures, to repeat 
 the unit figures beginning at the top, 
 then the tens, the hundreds, and so on. 
 Individual pupils were required to give 
 these as stated above, and to repeat the 
 column from the bottom to the top. 
 
30 
 
 A still more difficult exercise, as re- 
 quiring a firmer grasp, was to repeat 
 the contents of the column by multi- 
 plying, dividing, or extracting the square 
 or cube root of each separate number. 
 Thus the column 
 
 230 
 729 
 
 11 
 
 36 
 40000 
 
 16 
 
 40 
 
 was shown for three seconds only ; the 
 pupils were then asked but once to 
 multiply the first number by two, to 
 extract the cube root of the second, to 
 square the third, to extract the square 
 root of the fourth, to divide the fifth 
 by two, to multiply the sixth by twenty- 
 four, and to divide the seventh by four, 
 and then to repeat the changed column, 
 which they did as follows : 
 
No. 3 Exercise for accuracy in discriminating 
 
31 
 
 460 
 9 
 
 121 
 6 
 
 20000 
 
 384 
 
 10 
 
 Another example was given, as follows : 
 
 692 
 
 18 
 
 95 
 
 225 
 
 9000 
 
 470 
 
 6000 
 
 25 
 
 To square the second number, sub- 
 tract from the fourth 200, multiply the 
 fifth by three, and extract the square 
 root of the last number. This was re- 
 peated, as follows : 
 
 692 
 
 324 
 
 95 
 
 25 
 
 27000 
 
 470 
 
 6000 
 
 5 
 
32 
 
 Among other exercises of this kind 
 were the following columns, which were 
 repeated after a single glance and then 
 erased : 
 
 54 16 48 32 
 
 100 800 1789 500 
 
 1483 1702 1452 1620 
 
 621 1815 1321 350 
 
 1635 1300 11 1400 
 
 476 600 751 290 
 
 1000 24 560 6000 
 
 27 13 1492 00 
 
 10 
 
 The purpose of the exercise was sole- 
 ly to arouse an eager attention which 
 could be shared by each individual with- 
 out regard to scholarship, to quicken 
 the activities of the mind, to fix the 
 attention, and help to form the habit of 
 looking at things accurately and of 
 holding them in the mind. 
 
 There was no occasion for retain- 
 ing the figures in the order of their 
 arrangement, nor even for remember- 
 ing them at all, and I was surprised 
 
33 
 
 when, after some days had passed, I 
 discovered that my pupils could recall 
 two or three columns of figures similar 
 to the above in their order without 
 hesitation or error; an experience which 
 proved to me beyond a doubt, if any 
 proof were needed, that the mind re- 
 tains the impressions made upon it in 
 proportion to the degree of attention 
 given at the time the impressions are 
 received. 
 
 Although I had placed the figures 
 upon the board merely as an exercise 
 in attention, my pupils, who are daily 
 trained to habits of mental associations, 
 showed me that nearly all of the num- 
 bers I had written had conveyed to 
 their minds, in a single glance, one 
 or more facts of history. For exam- 
 ple: 
 
 100 (B.C.) Birth of Julius Caesar. 
 1483 Birth of Raphael and Martin Luther ; 
 death of the little princes in the Tower. 
 621 Mohammed's entry into Medina. 
 476 Downfall of the Roman Empire. 
 
1000 Visit of the Northmen to America. 
 800 Charlemagne crowned Pope. 
 1702 Death of William of Orange. Accession 
 
 of Queen Anne. 
 1815 Napoleon's escape from Elba; Waterloo; 
 
 Wellington's victory. 
 
 1300 Pope Boniface VIII; Dante at Rome. 
 600 (B.C.) Buddhism introduced into India. 
 1321 Death of Dante. 
 751 Rome founded. 
 
 1492 Castile and Aragon united ; expulsion 
 of the Moors ; Columbus discovers 
 America. 
 
 Thus some valuable suggestions were 
 obtained by way of practice in quickly 
 recalling what had been previously 
 learned. 
 
 Another exercise devised for the 
 same purpose to cultivate habits of 
 quick perception and concentration 
 was to place a number of figures in a 
 horizontal line, as seen in cut No. 2 and 
 also No. 3. 
 
 The figures were repeated in their 
 order in single units, then in tens and 
 hundreds, and from the right to the left. 
 
35 
 
 No. 3 was repeated thus : 9, two dots 
 above; 6, 2, 5, three dots below; 3, 8, 
 minus-sign above ; 4, one dot below ; 7, 
 2, plus-sign below ; 5, three dots above ; 
 9, 3, 7, one dot below; 4, 0, two dots 
 above ; 0, 1, 9, one dot below j 8, plus- 
 sign above ; 0. 
 
 A useful exercise in the development 
 of quick perception and careful discrim- 
 ination is that of " Unconscious Count- 
 ing," or the immediate recognition of 
 the number of objects without count- 
 ing them. There are presented to the 
 eye, for example, a number of circles 
 placed upon the revolving board, as 
 shown in cut No. 4, and instead of 
 counting one, two, three, four, five, six, 
 seven, the pupil distinguishes at a 
 glance that the numerical value of the 
 group is seven. The relative position 
 of the circles should be changed, and 
 the practice continued until the group 
 is as quickly perceived and as certain 
 to mean seven to the mind as a single 
 object to mean one. 
 
36 
 
 After a few weeks of practice, not 
 exceeding five minutes each morning, 
 my pupils were able to recognize in- 
 stantly twenty objects without counting, 
 seldom mistaking the group, of what- 
 ever kind, for any other number. 
 
 Sometimes an algebraic formula, or 
 a collection of letters used in Roman 
 notation, some unfamiliar words, or a 
 part of a sentence or paragraph, were 
 shown for a moment, then written by 
 the pupils precisely as they had seen 
 them during a single revolution of the 
 blackboard. 
 
 It may be easily seen that exercises 
 like the above, practised for a few min- 
 utes each day, would lead the mind to 
 seize quickly upon the notes or charac- 
 ters used in written music. That these 
 means have not failed of their end has 
 been repeatedly proved. Three or four 
 bars of music have been written on the 
 revolving board, then turned towards 
 the class for a few seconds, when the 
 pupils were able to state precisely what 
 
o. 4 Exercise for unconscious counting 
 
was written, giving the tonality, time, 
 name, and length of each note, rest, tie, 
 etc. 
 
 Testimony to the value of mental 
 training for the study of music is thus 
 given by the instructors : 
 
 MY DEAR Miss AIKEN, It gives me great 
 pleasure to write to you of the results of your 
 mind-training system upon the piano-forte pupils 
 in your school who are studying the Synthetic 
 Method. 
 
 The quality of work that is done by the girls is 
 immeasurably ahead of any I have ever had 
 from students of corresponding age outside of 
 your school. 
 
 There is nothing in piano-forte training that 
 requires closer concentration than transposition. 
 Last Tuesday I gave out the first example of trans- 
 position attempted in the present class, and 
 without previous preparation the example, which 
 was difficult, was immediately played in two other 
 keys. So difficult a test has not been made in any 
 other class under my care. 
 
 The examinations by Mr. Albert Ross Parsons 
 have elicited his enthusiastic commendation of 
 the mind-training, and he has expressed his satis- 
 faction with the intelligent, quick perception of 
 the girls who require but one telling in order to 
 
38 
 
 remember what he desires to convey in his teach- 
 ing. Believe me very truly yours, 
 
 KATE S. CHITTENDEN. 
 128 East Sixteenth Street, Nov. 23, 1892. 
 
 Prof. Albert Woeltge writes : 
 
 Quick perception is the basis of first-sight read- 
 ing, and a quick perception of music and instan- 
 taneous adaptation of fingering for its execution 
 is the basis of first- sight playing. 
 
 The mental process in either is essentially the 
 same as taught by Miss Aiken in her principle of 
 mind-training: an instantaneous analyzation of 
 the component parts of a musical composition. 
 
 Having witnessed several astonishing illustra- 
 tions of Miss Aiken's mind-training, and wishing 
 to test the principle as applicable to the reading 
 of music, I wrote on a blackboard, out of sight 
 of the class, and without previous intimation, the 
 following musical phrase, which, after being ex- 
 posed to the view of the pupils for the short 
 space of time of three seconds, was repeated by 
 them from memory correctly, naming note for 
 note in the treble and the bass, together with their 
 value and place in the measure, the key, and time: 
 
 =bi= 
 
39 
 
 By specially devised exercises this faculty may 
 be further developed, and become of practical 
 use for playing at first sight, and in committing 
 music rapidly to memory, saving much time 
 spent in practising. 
 
 The degree of attention, as we have seen, leads 
 the mind to observe distinctions quickly and ac- 
 curately. 
 
 ALBERT WOELTGE. 
 
 It is desirable to vary the exercises, 
 even when the end to be attained is the 
 same. The ability to discriminate with 
 accuracy will be gained by frequent 
 practice in the blackboard exercises 
 which have been already given, particu- 
 larly the one designated " Unconscious 
 Counting." It has been found, how- 
 ever, an interesting and valuable prac- 
 tice to measure upon the board various 
 lengths, and, having fixed in the mind a 
 standard of comparison, to be able to 
 distinguish the exact length of the lines 
 2 inches from 2, 5 inches from 5J, 
 9 inches from 10, 2 feet from 2 feet 1 
 inch, 2 feet 6 inches from 2 feet 7 inch- 
 es, etc. These lines of measurement 
 
40 
 
 have been sometimes placed together 
 upon the board, and often in single 
 lines. 
 
 Strict attention will fix the various 
 lengths in the mind, and memory will 
 enable the student to recall the stand- 
 ard by which he may draw with exact- 
 ness the desired length. 
 
 To cultivate a memory of places and 
 the relations of objects to each other in 
 space, horizontal and perpendicular lines 
 were drawn, as seen in cut No. 5. 
 
 The pupils were occasionally required 
 to prepare their lines for themselves, 
 and when the board, marked off in 
 spaces filled like the above, had been 
 seen for a few seconds only, to fill their 
 own spaces from memory ; or they were 
 asked to place the proper figure or char- 
 acter, for example, on the third line, 
 fourth space, or on the fifth line, second 
 space, and so on, until all the required 
 spaces were filled. They were also 
 asked to state the relations of the con- 
 tents of one space to that of others. 
 
41 
 
 This work it would have been impos- 
 sible for a class to do unless the mind 
 had been trained to habits of concentra- 
 tion. 
 
 By means of exercises like these the 
 scholar's mind is energized in the at- 
 tempt to see things precisely as they 
 are, and is also assisted in acquiring a 
 habit of careful observation, so useful 
 in every branch of study. These hab- 
 its of mind are a thousand times to be 
 preferred to the passivity and careless- 
 ness of the untrained scholar who is 
 content with a superficial glance, and 
 rests satisfied if the result of the obser- 
 vations is almost correct. 
 
 The study of drawing will be greatly 
 facilitated when the habit of quick and 
 accurate seeing has .been acquired to 
 any considerable degree. A model is 
 presented for a few moments of study, 
 and then withdrawn. It is required to 
 reproduce it from memory. This is also 
 a valuable practice, as preparing the 
 mind for independent work. It has 
 
42 
 
 been generally observed by the masters 
 of those pupils who are practised in 
 these methods of mind - training that 
 there exists a readiness to perceive 
 forms and their relations, and a steadi- 
 ness of attention, which enables them 
 to do excellent work in drawing, de- 
 signing, moulding, etc., with ease and 
 rapidity. 
 
 Mr. Jacobs, one of the authors of the 
 Graphic System of drawing, has charge 
 of the art classes in the school. He 
 says : 
 
 Many of the methods used by Miss Aiken I 
 have found of great value in the work of draw- 
 ing. For the purpose of training the eye and 
 hand, a great variety of exercises has been 
 given. 
 
 Lessons from objects in outline, and in light 
 and shade, and cast drawing, have been supple- 
 mented by work from the revolving blackboard, 
 viz., memory drawing of objects shown the week 
 before, sketches from the imagination, glance 
 work from objects shown and quickly withdrawn, 
 and rapid work from groups of objects. The 
 practical results obtained are a quickness of per- 
 ception, accurate statements of truth of form 
 
No. 5 Exercise for accuracy in recalling objects in 
 their places, and in their relation to other objects 
 
43 
 
 and values, given in a direct manner, all pupils 
 showing a real interest and pleasure in their 
 work. 
 
 Cut No. 6 shows examples of the simpler ex- 
 ercises given. After one revolution of the board 
 pupils made memory sketches. A few of the re- 
 sults are shown in cut No. 7. In cut No. 8 more 
 elaborate tile patterns are shown, and cut No. 9 
 gives examples of glance work from objects 
 shown but an instant, and two minutes only al- 
 lowed for each drawing. 
 
 A few sketches from the figure, made in a 
 more advanced class, are shown in cut No. 10. A 
 teacher in composition and rhetoric says: ' I have 
 been surprised at the facility of hand shown by 
 all the pupils, and above this I place their appre- 
 ciation of the value of care in all work required 
 of them. This I trace largely to their lessons in */ 
 time sketches and glance work.' 
 
 HOB ART B. JACOBS. 
 
 A blackboard practice in synonyms 
 has been found interesting and useful. 
 A column of words not exceeding ten 
 was written and shown for a few seconds. 
 The class was asked to write the syn- 
 onyms in the same order in which the 
 words had been written : 
 
44 
 
 Example Synonyms 
 
 Intend 
 
 expect 
 
 mean to 
 
 Contain 
 
 include 
 
 holds 
 
 Time 
 
 one day 
 
 eternity 
 
 Soon 
 
 immediately 
 
 quick 
 
 Portrait 
 
 picture 
 
 likeness 
 
 Clock 
 
 timepiece 
 
 timepiece 
 
 Landscape 
 
 scene 
 
 scene 
 
 Fortune 
 
 wealth 
 
 luck 
 
 Charity 
 
 kindness 
 
 almsgiving 
 
 Master 
 
 instructor 
 
 captain 
 
 Similar columns of words and their 
 synonyms have been frequently written, 
 varying in number from six to ten. 
 
 An independent way of fixing the at- 
 tention, and one which each pupil may 
 practise alone, and find excellent for dis- 
 cipline and instruction, has been prac- 
 tised in the following manner: The 
 pupils were asked, for example, to turn 
 to a certain page of a book, to look at 
 the first two lines, or more, for a single 
 moment, then to close the book and to 
 write the lines, every word, syllable, 
 and letter in its place, the capitals, if 
 any, and the punctuation-marks. Whole 
 
45 
 
 paragraphs may thus be reproduced by 
 the pupils after a single reading. They 
 feel that they have no time to gaze about 
 them; they are urged by the impera- 
 tiveness of the one reading, and their 
 attention thus stimulated, they do the 
 work, gain the experience of writing 
 the lines perfectly, and, better still, 
 form the habit of observing while read- 
 ing the true way, in my opinion, to 
 learn to spell, to punctuate, and even 
 to construct sentences. In this will be 
 found a vast economy of time compared 
 to the method of committing to mem- 
 ory rules which the pupil may be able 
 to recite, but seldom to apply. The 
 teacher will be able to make explana- 
 tions, and give reasons for technical 
 peculiarities when her pupils have ob- 
 served for themselves the facts, as they 
 should be led to do. Thus the way is 
 made ready for original, independent, 
 and self -instructing w r ork. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ATTENTION AND MEMORY 
 
 IN order to cultivate the art of listen- 
 ing a gift often more rare than fluent 
 speech some exercises were formu- 
 lated, and practised from ten to fifteen 
 minutes each day, with no further end 
 in view than that of accustoming the 
 mind to concentrate itself upon the 
 subject, in listening to the reading of a 
 book, or to a lecture, or to oral instruc- 
 tion. 
 
 The process by means of which this 
 has been accomplished will be seen in 
 the use of a few examples. To a class 
 of beginners in the mind-training exer- 
 cise I read once only, after explaining 
 the meaning of subject, predicate, and 
 object, the following extract from " A 
 
47 
 
 Child's Dream of a Star," by Charles 
 Dickens : 
 
 "There was once a child, and he 
 strolled about a good deal, and thought 
 of a number of things. He had a sister, 
 who was a child too, and his constant 
 companion. They wondered at the 
 beauty of the flowers ; they wondered at 
 the height and blueness of the sky ; they 
 wondered at the depth of the water; 
 they wondered at the goodness and 
 power of God, who made them lovely." 
 
 The scholars were ignorant of any 
 text-book definitions of subject, predi- 
 cate, object, and subordinate and de- 
 pendent words and clauses, but they 
 were shown the principal parts of a 
 sentence, as the words containing the 
 main idea, and their relation to each 
 other and to the remaining words of 
 the sentence. When this was made 
 clear by illustration, the class was asked 
 to repeat the important words in the 
 first two sentences, and then the whole 
 paragraph, and lastly to repeat the en- 
 
48 
 
 tire selection, which they did with 
 great delight, and with few mistakes, 
 and these they corrected after a short 
 pause, for in no case were they prompt- 
 ed. They had substituted the word 
 " color," for " blueness," and when told 
 there was an inaccuracy, recalled the 
 word without assistance. 
 
 Little by little they acquired a power 
 of seizing at once upon the principal 
 parts of a sentence, viz., the subject and 
 predicate, and to do this in the order 
 of their arrangement. To hold these 
 firmly in the mind, grouping around 
 each its dependent words, it was neces- 
 sary that unswerving attention should 
 be given to the once-heard reading. Be- 
 ginners were frequently asked to state 
 the subjects and predicates contained 
 in the paragraph before repeating the 
 whole. 
 
 As the pupils' power of continuous at- 
 tention increased with practice, a greater 
 number of lines of prose and poetry was 
 read for their recalling, until they could 
 
o. 6 Glance-work from revolving blackboard 
 
49 
 
 repeat from twenty to thirty lines, and 
 even more, of that which they had heard 
 read but once. 
 
 As invariably the best English was 
 selected for these exercises, they soon 
 learned unconsciously the principles of 
 rhetoric in the proper structure and 
 form of sentences, as well as the use 
 of synonyms. In order to express the 
 meaning conveyed to the mind in the 
 text, they frequently made use of an- 
 other word than that which they had 
 heard a practice to be greatly encour- 
 aged, except as an exercise for the sole 
 purpose of recalling the precise word, 
 when it should at once be exchanged. 
 
 The following, taken from u Tom 
 Brown at Kugby," was repeated by 
 individual scholars, and also by the 
 class, after one reading, at the end of 
 seven minutes; and when some weeks 
 had passed, the entire selection was im- 
 mediately and correctly recalled. The 
 words written below in italics were 
 first repeated, then the entire selection : 
 
50 
 
 " Tom and his father had alighted at 
 the Peacock Inn, London, at about 
 seven in the evening, and having heard 
 with unfeigned joy the paternal order 
 for supper and seen his father seated 
 cosily by the bright fire in the coffee- 
 room with the paper in his hand, Tom 
 had run out to see about him, had 
 wondered at all the vehicles passing and 
 repassing, and had fraternized with the 
 boots and ostler, from whom he ascer- 
 tained that the Tally-ho coach was a 
 tip-top goer, ten miles an hour, includ- 
 ing stoppages, and so punctual that all 
 the roads set their clocks by her. 
 
 " Then, being summoned to supper, he 
 had regaled himself on beefsteak and 
 oyster-sauce ; had at first attended to the 
 excellent advice his father gave him; 
 and then began nodding, from the united 
 effects of the supper, the fire, and the 
 lecture ; till the Squire, observing Tom's 
 state, and remember ing that it was nearly 
 nine o'clock and that the Tally-ho left 
 at three, sent the little fellow to bed 
 
61 
 
 with a shake of the hand and a few 
 parting words." 
 
 I would here say, in explanation of 
 the above, that I have given to the word 
 predicate a meaning slightly broader 
 than that generally accepted, and have 
 included participles under this head, as 
 being " key words " to the meaning of 
 the sentence, and therefore important in 
 our plan of memorizing. 
 
 The following poems were learned in 
 seven minutes by first repeating the sub- 
 jects and predicates as italicized : 
 
 HYMN TO THE NIGHT 
 
 1 heard the trailing garments of the Night 
 
 Sweep through her marble halls ! 
 / saw her sable skirts all fringed with light 
 
 From the celestial walls ! 
 
 I felt her presence, by its spell of might, 
 
 Stoop o'er me from above ; 
 The calm, majestic presence of the Night 
 
 As of the one I love. 
 
 / heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, 
 The manifold, soft chimes, 
 
52 
 
 That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, 
 Like some old poet's rhymes. 
 
 From the cool cisterns of the midnight air 
 
 My spirit drank repose ; 
 Tfie fountain of perpetual peace flows there 
 
 From those deep cisterns flows. 
 
 O holy Night ! from thee / learn to bear 
 
 What man has borne before ! 
 Thou latfst thy finger on the lips of Care, 
 
 And tJiey complain no more. 
 
 Peace ! Peace ! Orestes-like / breathe this prayer 
 Descend with broad-winged flight, 
 
 The welcome, the thrice- prayed- for, the most fair 
 The best-beloved Night! 
 
 H. W. LONGFELLOW. 
 
 BUGLE SONG 
 
 The splendor falls on castle walls 
 
 And snowy summits old in story; 
 The long light shakes across the lakes, 
 
 And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
 Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 
 
 hark ! hear ! how thin and clear, 
 And thinner, clearer, further going ; 
 
 O sweet and far, from cliff and scar, 
 The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! 
 
53 
 
 Blow, let us hear the purple glens 
 
 Slow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 
 
 O love, they die in yon rich sky, 
 
 They faint on hill or field or river : 
 Our echoes roll from soul to soul 
 And grow forever and forever. 
 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
 And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 Af* or the pupils had attained a cer- 
 tain proficiency in the art of attentive 
 listening, they were required to solve 
 problems of considerable length with- 
 out the aid of pencil and paper. 
 
 Thus the teacher would give a prob- 
 lem involving perhaps twenty mental 
 operations, the pupils following each 
 word closely, and at the end giving the 
 correct answer. 
 
 The scholars were drilled in numer- 
 ation, Arabic and Koman notation, ad- 
 dition, subtraction, multiplication, di- 
 vision, fractions, denominate numbers, 
 foreign money, mensuration, percentage, 
 
54 
 
 interest, squares, cubes, roots, and short 
 methods of multiplication. Very good 
 work could be done with ten minutes' 
 practice each day. 
 
 The following are examples of the 
 problems given : 
 
 1. Addition. (a) Add IV., XII., LX., XC., 
 CD., MM. (b) Cover the board with columns of 
 figures and add in every possible way, taking all 
 the figures as units, or giving them their true 
 value. 
 
 2. Subtraction. Subtract any number from 
 1000, as follows : 
 
 Use 1000 as the minuend, 498 as the subtrahend ; then 
 use the first subtrahend as the second minuend, and the 
 first remainder as the second subtrahend, and so on. II 
 correct, the eighth line will always be like the seventeenth. 
 
 1000 
 498 
 502 
 996 
 506 
 490 
 016 
 474 
 542 
 932 
 610 
 
A. N 
 
 \ IX 
 
 No. 7 Eight examples from second figure in No. 6 
 
56 
 
 034 
 254 
 780 
 474 
 
 3. Example for quick work in multiplication 
 and division : 
 
 498673x2 
 
 997346x3 
 
 2992038x4 
 
 11968152x5 
 
 59840760x6 
 
 359044560x7 
 
 2513311920x8 
 
 20106495360x9 
 
 180958458240-7-2 
 
 90479229120^-3 
 
 301597430404-4 
 
 7539935760-4-5 
 
 15079871524-6 
 
 2513311924-7 
 
 35904456-4-8 
 
 44880574-9 
 
 498673 
 
 4. Example in multiplication for drill in add- 
 ing large numbers, and in concentrated atten- 
 tion, partial products added mentally, and work 
 
56 
 
 proved by casting out the 9's. Order of work : 
 7x4; 7x6+5x4; 7x9+5x6 + 8x4; etc. 
 
 87,964 ' 
 39,857 
 
 3,505,981,148 
 5. Fractions. 
 
 *-^^ = 4& 
 
 6. Coins. Value of a French franc ? a German 
 mark ? an Italian lira ? a Russian kopeck ? a Jap- 
 anese yen ? etc. 
 
 7. Mensuration and Percentage. (a) Examples 
 in carpeting rooms, reckoning by short methods, 
 etc. (b) of anything is what per cent.? ? ? 
 
 **'* 
 
 8. Examples in multiplying numbers whose 
 units added make ten, and whose tens are alike, 
 or vice versa : (a) Multiply the tens by the next 
 higher number, and multiply the units together : 
 46x44=2024. (b) Multiply the tens together, 
 add the units' figure, and multiply the units to- 
 gether : 87x27=2349. 
 
 9. Squares. (a) Square 45 by rule just given. 
 (b) Square 84 by binomial formula, (c) Square 
 99,999,999. Ans. 9,999,999,800,000,001. 
 
 10. Miscellaneous Example. 9 times 8, multiply 
 by 32, subtract 4, add 200, square root, divide by 
 
57 
 
 5, subtract J, square it, multiply by 4, square 
 root, multiply by 11, subtract 9, multiply by 25, 
 add 1400, multiply by 10, cube root, add 8, di- 
 vide by 4, cube it, multiply by 2. Give answer, 
 3456, in Roman letters. 
 
 SPELLING 
 
 To make the art of spelling correctly 
 easier of attainment, and to invest the 
 tedious task of learning to spell with 
 an interest akin to the enjoyment of 
 the old-fashioned " spelling-match," was, 
 I thought, a problem worthy an attempt 
 at solution. It was not until after con- 
 siderable progress had been made in 
 concentrating attention and in improv- 
 ing the memory that the following plan 
 for an agreeable spelling-lesson was de- 
 vised. It will be seen that the device 
 is in the line of our mental train- 
 ing. 
 
 I had observed that by far the most 
 of the failures in spelling found in the 
 English compositions and essays of my 
 girls, as well as in their synopses of 
 
58 
 
 lectures, written reviews of lessons, and 
 in their letters, were made in the strug- 
 gle with the double letter. The plan 
 was to learn if possible the words 
 in common use which contain double 
 letters, and when these had grown fa- 
 miliar to the ear there would be no 
 need to burden the mind in trying to 
 remember the words which do not. The 
 first experiment was made upon a spell- 
 ing-class containing thirty-six scholars, 
 the success of which depended, as do all 
 our results in learning, upon the power 
 of attention. Each pupil in turn was 
 required to pronounce and spell a word 
 which doubled, for example, the letter 
 c. When this had been done by every 
 member of the class, each pupil wrote 
 as many of the words which she had 
 just heard as she could recall. Here, 
 then, was an opportunity to test the at- 
 tention given and the power of recalling 
 with accuracy. 
 
 After the words had been written 
 from memory, for there had been no 
 
59 
 
 dictation or giving out of words, the 
 c's were again called for, and the words 
 again went round the class until those 
 containing double c's seemed nearly 
 exhausted. The scholar who had then 
 written the largest number of words 
 pronounced and spelled her entire list, 
 from which her classmates could draw 
 to add to their own lists. Of this letter 
 the highest number of words written 
 thus from memory was 177. 
 
 The words were repeated until they 
 became familiar and the meaning of the 
 unfamiliar words was given. Fifteen 
 minutes every day was appropriated to 
 this exercise, and the class had reached 
 after six months the lesson of doubling 
 the letter s; the average number of 
 words thus learned and written was 
 2055, and the highest number was 
 4008. 
 
 Spelling by dictation in the ordinary 
 way is also given, and no word is 
 repeated by the teacher. And here it 
 must be remembered that the mind is 
 
60 
 
 not mentally assisted by being prompted. 
 On the contrary, it becomes dependent 
 and less active ; there is not the stim- 
 ulus to the attention when repetition is 
 expected. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 TO TEACH EKS 
 
 MORE than forty years spent in ear- 
 nest work in the attempt at teaching, 
 and the varied experience gained in 
 contact with the minds of more than 
 two thousand scholars, together with the 
 stimulus of an unfailing enthusiasm in 
 my work, impressed upon me the fact 
 that the highest success in teaching de- 
 pends upon the power of the teacher to 
 command and hold the attention of her 
 pupils. Here it may be said all do not 
 possess the power of commanding atten- 
 tion. This is true, alas ! of teachers as 
 of preachers, and is a vital want which 
 neither learning nor piety can supply to 
 the wandering mind of the languid lis- 
 tener. 
 
62 
 
 It should be the aim of every teacher 
 to get into close contact with the pupil's 
 mind, and daily, for a short time, at 
 least, to induce and direct its activity 
 when it is free from the worry and ex- 
 citement of learning and reciting a les- 
 son ; and especially should the teacher 
 endeavor to shorten the wearisome and 
 unprofitable hours spent over the school- 
 books. 
 
 Can you not afford, therefore, to set 
 apart twenty minutes every morning at 
 the opening of school, when there shall 
 be no attempt at learning, as such, only 
 an effort to arouse and strengthen the 
 mental faculties by daily exercise in the 
 same direction, until the full use of 
 them becomes a mental habit, which 
 may be profitably applied in the ac- 
 quiring of knowledge, whether that 
 knowledge be of the mind's own activi- 
 ties or of things external to itself ? 
 
 In setting aside these moments for 
 mental training you will brighten and 
 sharpen the instruments that are to be 
 
63 
 
 used by your pupils in the day's study 
 or work. A boy will whittle his stick 
 so much better and easier with a sharp 
 knife than with a dull one, and enjoy it 
 so much more that he will not begrudge 
 the time spent at the grindstone. 
 
 Can you not see how much time and 
 labor is saved to the child who with 
 sharpened faculties sits down to the 
 task of preparing, for example, a lesson 
 in spelling, the use of capitals, punctua- 
 tion, etc., as well as to the student in his 
 pursuit of the higher mathematics, who 
 is enabled by his habits of alertness and 
 concentration to seize quickly the condi- 
 tions of the problems, to hold them stead- 
 ily in his grasp, and by means of his well- 
 trained memory to bring to the solution 
 his previous experience in similar work ? 
 
 In selecting material for use in the 
 daily training, reference should be had 
 always to the age and experience of the 
 scholars, and care taken to choose only 
 such passages as are within the range 
 of their understanding. 
 
The teacher who has charge of the 
 earlier years of the child's school life 
 should keep the idea of the necessity of 
 attention constantly in her mind in all 
 her work. Accustom the child to once 
 hearing the word. If, for example, he 
 is given the words cat, dog, and boy, let 
 him write the words in the order in which 
 they were given after being repeated but 
 once. Or let him be given figures, as 
 4, 7, 3, 9, and the same process followed. 
 
 For the maturer minds there may be 
 made selections from the best English 
 authors, vocabularies of French and 
 German words, sometimes the table of 
 contents of a book about to be read or 
 studied, or the characteristics of a cer- 
 tain century as a synopsis of previous 
 study, or the classifications of some 
 branch of natural science ; making use 
 of natural associations whenever they 
 are seen to exist. 
 
 Nothing should be required of the 
 attention but that which the mind is 
 prepared to receive. 
 
No. 9 Glauce-work from objects 
 
65 
 
 In considering the practicability of 
 this method of preparing the mind for 
 study, I would ask the teachers to re- 
 member that the actual mind -train- 
 ing, in the use of the given exercises, 
 occupies but twenty minutes at the 
 opening of school each morning, and 
 must be viewed only as a means to an 
 end, and not as constituting the entire 
 work of the school. As well may the 
 clergyman, book - keeper, seamstress, or 
 any person of sedentary habits be con- 
 sidered as beating the air with dumb- 
 bells all day long because of the use 
 of them for a few moments before 
 entering upon their quiet avocations, 
 when, as a matter of fact, the well- 
 directed exercise is simply imparting 
 strength and vigor throughout the day. 
 
 Although this system of mind-train- 
 ing, as a distinct operation in school 
 work, is still incomplete, and many of 
 its possibilities are yet untried, it is a 
 fact that some of the evils referred to 
 in the beginning of this book have been 
 
66 
 
 overcome, notably these: study hours 
 have been made shorter, and the heavy 
 tax upon mind and body has been re- 
 lieved, while the same course of study 
 has been pursued with broader compre- 
 hension and greater enjoyment. 
 
 One of the most gratifying results is 
 that it has aroused the dull, slow-mov- 
 ing minds to a degree of activity which 
 has become a new and delightful ex- 
 perience to the possessors. 
 
 Again, the use of the mental train- 
 ing has been seen in the ability to recall 
 with accuracy after many months and 
 often years have passed that which the 
 pupils have read or heard of poetry or 
 prose, facts of history, literature, art, 
 etc. In a considerable degree the power 
 has been acquired of shutting out from 
 the mind extraneous and irrelevant sub- 
 jects while pursuing their studies, as in 
 the working of long and difficult ex- 
 amples in mental arithmetic, problems in 
 algebra, geometry, natural philosophy, 
 astronomy, etc. 
 
67 
 
 This power of concentration has been 
 sought for, not with the idea of making 
 mere memorizers, but in order that they 
 may be able to recall promptly what they 
 have gathered from the great realm of 
 facts and principles, so as to hold it in 
 the mind as a basis of reasoning, and ulti- 
 mately for the purpose of possessing well- 
 disciplined and self -controlling minds. 
 
 It may be said that the process of 
 educating the faculties as a means to 
 the teacher's work demands great labor 
 and strength on the part of the teacher. 
 It is true. But it is also true that the 
 teacher who teaches with heart as well 
 as brain will experience a perpetual joy 
 and satisfaction which she who only 
 asks questions from a book and " hears 
 lessons" knows not of. Unless the 
 teacher is able by her personal power 
 and the love she has for her work to 
 inspire her pupils with the desire for 
 knowledge and an enthusiasm in the 
 search for it, her teaching is of little 
 value. Said the wise philosopher and 
 
68 
 
 great school-master, Plato : " Give me 
 rather the desire after knowledge than 
 the gift of knowledge." 
 
 The teacher who would make the 
 training of her pupils' minds and hearts 
 the prime factor in her work must be 
 possessed of a sincere love for it. She 
 must even be an enthusiast in her pro- 
 fession, and her whole mind and soul and 
 spirit must be absorbed in the develop- 
 ment of the highest possibilities in the 
 minds and characters of her scholars 
 while they are under her charge. 
 
 In the employment of methods as 
 means to an end she will not find her 
 task so easy as in that of a hearing reci- 
 tations," for the activity awakened by 
 the morning exercise must be sustained 
 to a good degree by her own personal 
 power and unfailing ability to hold the 
 attention of her classes throughout the 
 day. 
 
 It is true that the teacher is aided 
 by the interest which attaches to the 
 subject, and by the intelligence and 
 
69 
 
 taste of her scholars ; but her aptitude 
 in making the mentality of her pupils 
 such as to serve as the means of ac- 
 quiring further knowledge will be her 
 highest work. 
 
 I would not be understood as want- 
 ing in a just estimate of the faithful- 
 ness and devotion of teachers as a class ; 
 I believe that in no profession is so 
 much wearying and wearing labor done 
 with so little appreciation and so nig- 
 gardly remuneration as in the vocation 
 of the teacher. From out my more than 
 forty years' experience in the belated art 
 Of teaching I would ask every teacher 
 to adopt some direct method of training 
 her scholars' minds, as a means to less 
 laborious and more profitable teaching. 
 
 My heart is full of loving interest 
 and kindly sympathy for the school 
 girls and boys everywhere who are 
 spending their young lives in the mo- 
 notonous drudgery of studying to re- 
 cite before they have learned to study. 
 Little reference has their education to 
 
70 
 
 their future needs and successes in life 
 if void of right mental habits. A wise 
 historian has written as follows of the 
 men who framed our Constitution : 
 " At the time of the Revolution, when 
 the several States framed new govern- 
 ments, they simply put a written con- 
 stitution into the position of supremacy 
 formerly occupied by the charter. In- 
 stead of a document expressed in terms 
 of a royal grant, they adopted a docu- 
 ment expressed in the terms of a popu- 
 lar edict. 
 
 " To this the Legislature must con- 
 form ; the people were already somewhat 
 familiar with the method of testing the 
 constitutionality of a law by getting 
 the matter brought before the courts. 
 
 " The mental habit thus generated 
 was probably more important than any 
 other in enabling our Federal Union 
 to be formed. Without it, indeed, it 
 would have been impossible to form a 
 durable Union." 
 
 When the truth has been fully dis- 
 

 No. 10 Time sketches 
 
71 
 
 cussed and established in the minds of 
 educators that all schools should be 
 training -schools; when the candidate 
 for the teacher's office is first asked to 
 state her methods of training the mind 
 rather than to answer, through a cer- 
 tificate or diploma, the all -important 
 question, " How much do you know ?" 
 not only will the girls and boys be far 
 better prepared for honest and system- 
 atic work in the world, but the stand- 
 ard of scholarship will be raised, be- 
 cause in the years spent in school the 
 habit of concentrating attention will 
 have been gained, the memory strength- 
 ened, and the reasoning faculties as- 
 sisted to a broad and comprehensive 
 development. 
 
 I again repeat the results which 
 have been accomplished in my own 
 school : much time has been economized, 
 more instruction received, a clearer and 
 broader intelligence secured by direct 
 contact with the teacher's mind ; and 
 last, but by no means least, a truer 
 
sympathy has existed between the 
 teacher and scholar. 
 
 If the necessity for gaining a liveli- 
 hood could be stricken out as a prime 
 factor in the motive for teaching, which 
 almost universally exists, how many of 
 the evils which we now deplore in the 
 prevailing system of education would 
 be overcome ! 
 
 Teaching, the most sacred of all pro- 
 fessions for only as preaching is teach- 
 ing is it Christlike and holy is unwill- 
 ingly adopted by the young lady who 
 suddenly finds the family fortune gone ; 
 she turns to teaching as the only em- 
 ployment befitting one who has " been 
 brought up a lady." The lack of special 
 training for the altogether new employ- 
 ment she soon deplores, for she finds 
 herself not in touch with the minds of 
 her pupils, and aimlessly, save for the 
 obtaining of the salary, gropes her way 
 in the dark, a blind guide. 
 
 Our hopes for the future of the art 
 of teaching brighten with every dis- 
 
covery of new spheres for women, and 
 for every ingenious device which fash- 
 ion, fancy, or need create for women's 
 hands to do. May the time soon come 
 when only those whose minds and hearts 
 have been thoroughly trained for the 
 work shall be called to train and to 
 teach the youth of our country, and 
 may the call to teach come from the 
 heart of the teacher, and not alone for 
 the sake of heaping up riches. To 
 be the good teacher, in the nobler sense, 
 demands self-sacrifice and a loving in- 
 terest in those pupils who need such 
 help and encouragement as they could 
 not receive but for her liberality. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 You will observe that I have not 
 dwelt upon the subject of memory 
 apart from that of attention. If I were 
 compelled to sum up in a single word 
 all that is embraced in the expression 
 "a good memory" I should use the 
 word attention. Indeed, I would de- 
 fine education, moral and intellectual, 
 as attention. 
 
 " The teacher who labors to enlist the 
 strongest and noblest feelings on the 
 side of attention to the most important 
 and valuable subjects will not fail to 
 exert not only a great influence over 
 the mental states of her pupils but upon 
 their moral principles." 
 
 If we would cultivate in our own 
 minds as well as in the minds of our 
 
pupils the power of an individual at- 
 tention, concentrated upon that which 
 is highest, noblest, and best, memory 
 would become the Kecording Angel of 
 our daily lives, 
 
 "And not an image of the past 
 Should fear that pencil's touch." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
BELIEVING that a few words stating 
 more clearly the principles of psychology, 
 upon which the system of mind-training is 
 based, would indicate more precisely its 
 value as a solution of some pedagogic 
 problems, I append a few relevant quota- 
 tions from Ribot. 
 
 In the following pages will also be 
 found some suggestions for those whose 
 powers of memory, either by neglect or 
 otherwise, have become impaired, which 
 will, I think, prove helpful if conscien- 
 tiously followed. 
 
 NOTES FROM RIBOT 
 
 The process through which voluntary attention 
 is formed may be reduced to the following single 
 formula: to render attractive, by artifice, what is 
 not so by nature ; to give an artificial interest to 
 things that have not a natural interest. I use 
 the word "interest" in the ordinary sense, equiv- 
 alent to the periphrase : anything that keeps the 
 
80 
 
 mind on the alert. But the mind is only kept 
 alert by the agreeable, disagreeable, or mixed 
 action of objects upon it that is, by emotional 
 states. The whole question, accordingly, is re- 
 duced to the finding of effective motives ; if the 
 latter be wanting, voluntary attention does not 
 appear. 
 
 The birth of voluntary attention, the power of 
 fastening the mind upon non-attractive objects, 
 can only be accomplished by force, under the in- 
 fluence of education, whether derived from men 
 or things external. Education derived from men 
 is, of course, the most easily demonstrable, but it 
 is not the only kind. In this we have an instance 
 of the genesis of voluntary attention. It was nec- 
 essary to graft upon a desire natural and direct a 
 desire artificial and indirect. 
 
 Reading is an operation that does not possess 
 an immediate attraction, but as a means to an end 
 it has attraction, a kind of borrowed attraction, 
 and that is sufficient, in order to impart to the 
 purpose in view a power of action that it natu- 
 rally does not possess. I shall now indicate these 
 periods in point of time into which voluntary at- 
 tention falls. 
 
 In the first period the educator acts only upon 
 simple feelings. He employs fear in all its forms, 
 egotistic tendencies, the attraction of rewards, and 
 tender and sympathetic emotions. 
 
 During the second period artificial attention is 
 aroused and maintained by means of feelings of 
 
81 
 
 secondary formation, such as love of self, emu- 
 lation, ambition, and interest in a practical line, 
 duty, etc. 
 
 The third period is that of organization; atten- 
 tion is aroused and sustained by habit. The pu- 
 pil in the class-room, the workman in his shop, 
 the clerk at his office, the tradesman behind his 
 counter all would, as a rule, prefer to be some- 
 where else, but egotism, ambition, and interest 
 have created, by repetition, a fixed and lasting- 
 habit. Acquired attention has thus become a 
 second nature, and the artificial process is com- 
 plete. The mere fact of being placed in a cer- 
 tain attitude, amid certain surroundings, brings 
 with it all the rest; attention is produced and sus- 
 tained less through present causes than through 
 accumulation of prior causes, habitual motives 
 having acquired the force of natural motives. 
 Individuals refractory to education and discipline 
 never attain to this third period ; in such people 
 voluntary attention is seldom produced, or only 
 intermittently, and cannot become a habit. 
 
 But, in truth, we should be destitute of all gen- 
 ius of observation or blinded by prejudice if we 
 did not perceive that voluntary attention, in its 
 durable form, is really a difficult state to sustain, 
 and that actually many do not attain to it; there- 
 fore the teacher is needed. 
 
 Cases also occur that present an outline at least 
 of voluntary attention, which is natural enough 
 
 with those who have contracted the habit 
 6 
 
82 
 
 MEMORY SELECTIONS 
 
 The selections have been made with a 
 view to assist those who are no longer in 
 school. The subjects, predicates, or key- 
 words should be selected at first from a 
 few sentences only, and written ; then 
 read the sentences which contain these 
 leading words once, and with these be- 
 fore you try to recall what you have read. 
 When you are able to do this accurately 
 and without hesitation, add one or two 
 more sentences, and try to repeat them 
 from the beginning. Make the one read- 
 ing imperative, even if you can read but 
 one sentence or one verse. The habit 
 of concentrating the attention will grow 
 rapidly, and you will soon find your mem- 
 ory greatly improved. Practise reading a 
 column of figures once, and then repro- 
 ducing them in their exact order. Listen 
 to a number of words being read ; then 
 try to repeat them exactly, and the next 
 day try to recall these exercises. The 
 same process of mental work which the 
 scholar follows at school will, if practised 
 
83 
 
 every day, surely prove of the utmost ben- 
 efit to those who desire to learn to concen- 
 trate attention and to possess a good mem- 
 ory. 
 
 Some of the following selections were 
 made as having no interest to the stu- 
 dent, but as disciplining the mind to such 
 a degree as to insure a retentive memory. 
 The shorter prose articles can be read 
 through without pausing for the recit- 
 ing of them ; the longer ones should be 
 divided into two or three readings and 
 recitations, according to the length. They 
 have been given as exercises in this way 
 in my school, and the pupils have recited, 
 often without hesitation, the entire selec- 
 tion after weeks and even months have 
 elapsed. 
 
 ORANGE 
 
 The Orange Art Association opened its spring 
 exhibition yesterday at No. 531 Main Street, East 
 Orange. The exhibition is a creditable one, and 
 much the best that the association has yet given. 
 There are eighty-five pictures on the walls oils, 
 water-colors, black- and -whites, and architectural 
 designs. The Exhibition Committee consists of 
 Charles E. Moss, Chairman ; Alexander Brownlie, 
 
84 
 
 Miss C. K. Herrick, Mrs. George L. Kellogg, and 
 George E. Melencly. 
 
 The annual meeting of the East Orange Repub- 
 lican Club was held on Thursday evening, and 
 these officers were elected : President, Joel W. 
 Hatt ; Vice-presidents, J. H. Kattenstroth, Mal- 
 colm B. Cole; Secretary, Harry D. Miller; Treas- 
 urer, Louis T. Muller ; Governors, J. H. Palmer, 
 Eugene M. Brewster, William D. Gilbert, E. Ever- 
 ett Mills, and Samuel F. Varian. 
 
 MRS. LE DUG TO BEAD 
 
 Mrs. Janvier Le Due will give a reading on 
 Tuesday afternoon, at 4 o'clock, at the Home for 
 Convalescents, No. 433 East One -hundred -and 
 eighteenth Street. Mrs. Le Due, who was a Miss 
 Spencer, and is related to the Lorillard and Clin- 
 ton families, is to give reminiscences of the 
 Prince of Wales's visit to her brother's ranch. 
 Her principal reading that afternoon, however, 
 will be on the historic houses of Harlem, includ- 
 ing the women who figured prominently in Har- 
 lem's social annals of the olden time. In addition 
 to a large list of down-town patronesses, a num- 
 ber of women from Harlem, including Mrs. Don- 
 ald MacLean, Miss Van Buren Vanderpoel, Mrs. 
 Jordan L. Mott, Mrs. P. J. Lewis Searing, and 
 Mrs. Charles Fraser MacLean, are interesting 
 themselves in the reading. Miss Grace Cornell is 
 
85 
 
 to give some mandolin solos, and Miss Adelaide 
 Haight, the well-known contralto, will sing sev- 
 eral ballads. 
 
 MOVEMENTS OF THE KOYAL FAMILY 
 
 The Princess of Wales arrived at Maiiborough 
 House on Saturday from Denmark, having been 
 absent from England more than ten weeks. The 
 Prince and Princess of Wales are expected next 
 week at Sandringham, which place will be their 
 headquarters until the middle of January. The 
 Prince has gone to Newmarket for a few days. 
 Prince and Princess Christian arrived at Bagshot 
 on Friday from Darmstadt, and are staying a few 
 days with the Duke and Duchess of Connaught be- 
 fore settling at Cumberland Lodge for the winter, 
 when they are to receive a visit from their young- 
 er daughter, Princess Aribert, of Anhalt, who has 
 been staying at Balmoral with the Queen during 
 the last fortnight. Prince and Princess Edward, 
 of Saxe-Weimar, who have been staying for some 
 time at Gordon Castle with the Duke of Rich- 
 mond, are to be guests of the Prince and Princess 
 of Wales at Sandringham next month. 
 
 CONVENTION OF THE DEACONESSES 
 
 The eighth annual conference of the Deacon- 
 esses of the Methodist Episcopal Church was con- 
 tinued yesterday at the Central Methodist Epis- 
 
86 
 
 copal Church, Seventh Avenue, near Fourteenth 
 Street. Bishop Joyce, of Chattanooga, presided. 
 Among those who read papers or made addresses 
 were Miss Downing, superintendent of the Brook- 
 lyn Home, on "The Work of Deaconesses"; Miss 
 Pierce, superintendent of the Cincinnati Home, 
 on "The Deaconesses, Trained in Mind, Heart, 
 and Spirit"; Miss Lann, of the New England 
 Home, " The Spirit of the Ideal Deaconess in 
 Missionary Work " ; the Rev. H. C. Weakley, of 
 Cincinnati, "The Deaconess Among the Sick"; 
 the Rev. J. S. Meyer, of Chicago, " The Deacon- 
 ess among Children"; the Rev. Carl Stoecker, of 
 Amsterdam, N. Y., "The Deaconess and the Res- 
 cue Mission." 
 
 It was voted to hold the next annual confer- 
 ence at Boston. 
 
 WHAT IS GOING ON TO-DAY 
 
 Dr. Meyer trial, Court of General Sessions. 
 
 New York College of Music commencement, 
 Chickering Hall, 8 P.M. 
 
 Students' Dramatic Club entertainment, Berke- 
 ley Lyceum, evening. 
 
 Keeley Institute reunion, White Plains. 
 
 Harlem Democratic Club, No. 106 West One- 
 himdred-and-twenty-sixth Street, 8 P.M. 
 
 Board of Education, 4 P.M. 
 
 German Good Government Club organization, 
 Harlem Opera-house, 8 P.M. 
 
87 
 
 Five Points Mission farewell meeting, 1:30 P.M. 
 
 Northern Pacific Railroad investigation. 
 
 Independent Democratic County Organization 
 meeting, Eighth Avenue and Thirty - seventh 
 Street, evening. 
 
 Farnham Post, G.A.R., reorganization, Broad- 
 way and Forty-ninth Street, evening. 
 
 Christian Endeavor convention, Brooklyn. 
 
 Salvation Army meetings 11 A.M., Calvary 
 Baptist Church; 3 P.M., Association Hall; 7:45 
 P.M., Cooper Union. New York Tribune. 
 
 My poetical temperament evinced itself at a 
 very early period. The village church was at- 
 tended every Sunday by a neighboring squire, 
 the lord of the manor, whose park stretched 
 quite to the village, and whose spacious country- 
 seat seemed to take the church under its pro- 
 tection. Indeed, you would have thought the 
 church had been consecrated to him instead of 
 to the Deity. The parish clerk bowed low be- 
 fore him, and the vergers humbled themselves 
 unto the dust in his presence. He always en- 
 tered a little late, and with some stir : striking 
 his cane emphatically on the ground, swaying 
 his hat in his hand, and looking loftily to the 
 right and left as he walked slowly up the aisle ; 
 and the parson, who always ate his Sunday din- 
 ner with him, never commenced service until he 
 appeared. He sat with his family in a large 
 pew, gorgeously lined, humbling himself de- 
 
88 
 
 voutly on velvet cushions, and reading lessons 
 of meekness and lowliness of spirit out of splen- 
 did gold-and-morocco prayer-books. Whenever 
 the parson spoke of the difficulty of a rich man's 
 entering the kingdom of heaven, the eyes of the 
 congregation would turn towards the "grand 
 pew," and I thought the squire seemed pleased 
 with the application. 
 
 Our meals were solitary and unsocial. My 
 uncle rarely spoke ; he pointed to whatever he 
 wanted, and the servant perfectly understood 
 him. Indeed, his man John, or Iron John, as he 
 was called in the neighborhood, was a counter- 
 part of his master. He was a tall, bony old 
 fellow, with a dry wig, that seemed made of 
 cow's tail, and a face as tough as though it had 
 been made of cow's hide. He was generally clad 
 in a long, patched livery coat, taken out of the 
 wardrobe of the house, and which bagged loose- 
 ly about him, having evidently belonged to some 
 corpulent predecessor, in the more plenteous 
 days of the mansion. From long habits of taci- 
 turnity, the hinges of his jaws seemed to have 
 grown absolutely rusty, and it cost him as much 
 effort to set them ajar, and to let out a tolerable 
 sentence, as it would have done to set open the 
 iron gates of the park, and let out the old fam- 
 ily carriage that was dropping to pieces in the 
 coach-house. WASHINGTON IRVING 
 
89 
 
 SHE WAS A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT 
 
 She was a Phantom of delight 
 
 When first she gleamed upon my sight ; 
 
 A lovely Apparition, sent 
 
 To be a moment's ornament ; 
 
 Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair ; 
 
 Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair ; 
 
 But all things else about her drawn 
 
 From May -time and the cheerful Dawn ; 
 
 A dancing Shape, an Image gay, 
 
 To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 
 
 I saw her upon nearer view, 
 
 A Spirit, yet a Woman, too ! 
 
 Her household motions light and 'free, 
 
 And steps of virgin liberty ; 
 
 A countenance in which did meet 
 
 Sweet records, promises as sweet ; 
 
 A Creature, not too bright or good 
 
 For human nature's Daily food ; 
 
 For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
 
 Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 
 
 And now I see with eye serene 
 
 The very pulse of the machine ; 
 
 A Being breathing thoughtful breath, 
 
 A Traveller between life and death ; 
 
 The reason firm, the temperate will, 
 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ; 
 
90 
 
 A perfect Woman, nobly planned, 
 To warn, to comfort, and command ; 
 And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
 With something of an angel light. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness ! 
 This is the state of man : To-day he puts forth 
 The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms, 
 And bears his blushing honors thick upon him ; 
 The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, 
 And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 
 His greatness is a-ripening nips his root, 
 And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured 
 Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, 
 This many Summers in a sea of glory ; 
 But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride 
 At length broke under me ; and now has left me, 
 Weary and old with service, to the mercy 
 Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me. 
 Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye : 
 I feel my heart new open'd. O how wretched 
 Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors! 
 There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, 
 That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, 
 More pangs and fears than wars or women have ; 
 And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, 
 Never to hope again. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
91 
 
 MARJORIE FLEMING 
 
 One November afternoon in 1810 the year in 
 which Waverley was resumed and laid aside again, 
 to be finished off, its last ten volumes in three 
 weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its 
 author, by the death of Lord Melville, narrowly 
 escaped getting a civil appointment in India 
 three men, evidently lawyers, might have been 
 seen escaping like school-boys from the Parlia- 
 ment House, and speeding arm - in - arm down 
 Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a 
 surly blast of sleet. 
 
 The three friends sought the Meld of the low 
 wall old Edinburgh boys remember well, and 
 sometimes miss now as they struggle with the 
 stout west wind. 
 
 The three were curiously unlike each other. 
 One, " a little man of feeble make, who would be 
 unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot's pace," 
 slight, with "small, elegant features, hectic cheek, 
 and soft, hazel eyes, the index of the quick, sensi- 
 tive spirit within, as if he had the warm heart of 
 a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of 
 her weaknesses." Another, as unlike a woman as 
 a man can be ; homely, almost common in look 
 and figure ; his hat and coat and, indeed, his en- 
 tire covering worn to the quick, but all of the 
 best material. What redeemed him from vul- 
 garity and meanness were his eyes, deep - set, 
 heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with 
 
92 
 
 a slumbering glow far in, as if they could be 
 dangerous ; a man to care nothing for at first 
 glance, but somehow to give a second and not 
 forgetting look at. The third was the biggest 
 of the three, and though lame, nimble and all 
 rough and alive with power ; had you met him 
 anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddes- 
 dale store - farmer come of gentle blood ; "a 
 stout, blunt carle," as he says of himself, with 
 the swing and stride and the eye of a man of the 
 hills a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about 
 him. On his broad and somewhat stooping 
 shoulders was set that head which, with Shakes- 
 peare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in 
 the world. He was in high spirits, keeping his 
 companions and himself in roars of laughter, and 
 every now and then seizing them, and stopping, 
 that they might take their fill of the fun ; there 
 they stood shaking with laughter, "not an inch 
 of their body free " from its grip. At George 
 Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind 
 St. Andrew's Church, one to Albany Street, the 
 other, our big and limping friend, to Castle 
 Street. 
 
 We need hardly give their names. The first 
 was William Eskine, afterwards Lord Kinedder, 
 chased out of the world by a calumny, killed by 
 its foul breath 
 
 "And at the touch of wrong without a strife 
 Slipped in a moment out of life." 
 
93 
 
 There is nothing in literature more beautiful or 
 more pathethic than Scott's love and sorrow for 
 this friend of his youth. The second was Will- 
 iam Clerk, the Darsie Latimer of Redgauntlet ; 
 "a man, "as Scott says, "of the most acute in- 
 tellect and powerful apprehension," but of more 
 powerful indolence, so as to leave the world with 
 little more than a report of what he might have 
 been a humorist as genuine, though not quite 
 so savagely Swiftian as his brother, Lord Eldin, 
 neither of whom had much of that commonest 
 and best of humors called good. The third we 
 all know. What has he not done for every one 
 of us ? Who else ever, except Shakespeare, so 
 diverted mankind, entertained and entertains a 
 world so liberally, so wholesomely ? We are 
 fain to say not even Shakespeare, for his is 
 something deeper than diversion, something high- 
 er than pleasure, and yet who would care to split 
 this hair ? Dr. JOHN BROWN. 
 
 TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 
 
 If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I 
 should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who 
 find no language rich enough to paint the great 
 captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to 
 tell you the story of Washington, I should take 
 it from your hearts you who think no marble 
 white enough on which to carve the name of 
 the father of his country. But I am to tell you 
 
the story of a negro, Toussaint 1'Ouverture, who 
 has hardly left one written line. I am to glean 
 it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies, 
 men who despised him because he was a negro 
 and a slave, hated him because he had beaten 
 them in battle. 
 
 Cromwell manufactured his own army. Na- 
 poleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at 
 the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. 
 Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty ; 
 this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. 
 
 Cromwell manufactured his own army out of 
 what ? Englishmen the best blood in Europe. 
 Out of the middle class of Englishmen the best 
 blood of the island. And with it he conquered 
 what? Englishmen their equals. This man 
 manufactured his army out of what ? Out of 
 what you call the despicable race of negroes de- 
 based, demoralized by two hundred years of sla- 
 very, one hundred thousand of them imported into 
 the island within four years, unable to speak a 
 dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out 
 of this mixed and, as you say, despicable mass, he 
 forged a thunderbolt and hurled it at what ? At 
 the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and 
 sent him home conquered ; at the most warlike 
 blood in Europe, the French, and put them un- 
 der his feet ; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, 
 the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. 
 Now if Cromwell was a general, at least this man 
 was a soldier. 
 
95 
 
 Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go 
 back with me to the commencement of the cen- 
 tury, and select what statesman you please. Let 
 him be either American or European ; let him 
 have a brain the result of six generations of 
 culture ; let him have the ripest training of uni- 
 versity routine ; let him add to it the better edu- 
 cation of practical life ; crown his temples with 
 the silvery locks of seventy years, and show me 
 the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most 
 sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel rich as 
 imbittered foes have placed on the brow of this 
 negro rare military skill, profound knowledge 
 of human nature, content to blot out all party 
 distinctions, and trust a State to the blood of its 
 sons anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, 
 and taking his station by the side of Roger Will- 
 iams before any Englishman or American had 
 won the right ; and yet this is the record which 
 the history of rival States makes up for this in- 
 spired black of St. Domingo. 
 
 Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to 
 Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves 
 of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask 
 them what they think of the negro's sword. 
 
 I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon 
 made his way to empire over broken oaths and 
 through a sea of blood. This man never broke 
 his word. I would call him Cromwell, but 
 Cromwell was only a soldier, and the State he 
 founded went down with him into his grave. I 
 
96 
 
 would call him Washington, but the great Vir- 
 ginian held slaves. This man risked his empire 
 rather than permit the slave-trade in the hum- 
 blest village of his dominions. 
 
 You think me a fanatic, for you read history 
 not with your eyes, b\J$ with your prejudices. 
 But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, 
 the Muse of history will put Phocion for the 
 Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for 
 England, Fayette for France, choose Washington 
 as the bright, consummate flower of our earlier 
 civilization ; then dipping her penin the sunlight 
 will write, in the clear blue above them all, the 
 name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr 
 Toussaint 1'Ouverture. WENDELL PHILLIPS. 
 
 GOOD PRICES FOR FIRST EDITIONS 
 
 The Johnson book sale, which has been going 
 on for the last three days at Bangs & Co.'s auc- 
 tion rooms, has been a most important sale of 
 first editions. After the first day good prices 
 were paid. The following are the best figures of 
 the sale yesterday : A set of Ainsworth, 68 vol- 
 umes, $170; Charlotte and Emily Bronte's works, 
 first edition, 20 volumes, $125 ; Dickens's The 
 Village Coquettes, 1836, $105 ; Maria Edgeworth's 
 Tales and Novels, bound by Tout, $112.50 ; Beau- 
 ty and the Beast, only three copies of which are 
 known in this edition, $162.50 ; Charles Lever, in 
 3d volumes, $325 ; nine volumes of Ruskin, $324 ; 
 
97 
 
 Shelley's Queen Mob, published by the author, 
 with an autograph letter of Shelley's, $150. 
 
 New York Tribune. 
 
 TO DAFFODILS. 
 
 O yellow flowers that Herrick sung! 
 
 O yellow flowers that danced and swung 
 In Wordsworth's verse, and now to me, 
 Unworthy, from this "pleasant lea," 
 
 Laugh back, unchanged, and ever young ; 
 
 Ah ! what a text to us o'erstrung, 
 O'erwrought, o'erreaching, hoarse of lung, 
 You teach by that immortal glee, 
 O 3 r ellow flowers ! 
 
 We, by the Age's oestrus stung, 
 Still hunt the New with eager tongue, 
 Vexed ever by the Old ; but ye, 
 What ye have been ye still shall be 
 When we are dust the dust among, 
 O yellow flowers ! 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON. 
 
 HOUSEHOLD ART 
 
 "Mine be a cot" for the hours of play, 
 Of the kind that is built by Miss Greenaway ; 
 Where the walls are low, and the roofs are red, 
 And the birds are gay in the blue o'erhead ; 
 And dear little figures, in frocks and frills, 
 Go roaming about at their own sweet wills, 
 
98 
 
 And play with the pups, and reprove the calves, 
 And do naught in the world (but Work) by 
 
 halves, 
 
 From "Hunt the Slipper" and " Riddle-me-ree " 
 To watching the cat in the apple-tree. 
 
 O Art of the Household ! Men may prate 
 
 Of their ways "intense" and Italianate 
 
 They may soar on their wings of sense, and float 
 
 To the audeld and the dim remote 
 
 Till the last sun sink in the last-lit west, 
 
 'Tis the Art at the Door that will please the 
 
 best ; 
 
 To the end of Time 'twill be still the same, 
 For the Earth first laughed when the children 
 
 came ! AUSTIN DOBSON. 
 
 THE CURB'S PROGRESS 
 
 Monsieur the Cure down the street 
 
 Comes with his kind old face 
 With his coat worn bare, and his straggling 
 hair, 
 
 And his green umbrella-case. 
 
 You may see him pass by the little "Grande 
 Place," 
 
 And the tiny "H6tel de Ville." 
 He smiles, as he goes, to the fleuriste Rose, 
 
 And the pompier Theophile. 
 
 He turns, as a rule, through the " Marche" cool, 
 Where the noisy fish- wives call ; 
 
99 
 
 And his compliment pays to the "belle Thermae," 
 As she knits in her dusky stall. 
 
 There's a letter to drop at the locksmith's shop, 
 
 And Toto, the locksmith's niece, 
 Has jubilant hopes, for the Cure gropes 
 
 In his tails for a pain d'epice. 
 
 There's a little dispute with a merchant of fruit, 
 
 Who is said to be heterodox, 
 That will ended be with a "Ma foi, oui 1" 
 
 And a pinch from the Cure's box. 
 
 There is also a word that no one heard 
 
 To the furrier's daughter Lou; 
 And a pale cheek fed with a flickering red, 
 
 And a "Bon Dieu, garde m'sieu !" 
 
 But a grander way for the Sous-Prefet, 
 And a bow for Ma'am'selle Anne ; 
 
 And a mock "off-hat" to the Notary's cat, 
 And a nod to the Sacristan ; 
 
 For ever through life the Cure goes 
 With a smile on his kind old face 
 
 With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair, 
 And his green umbrella- case. 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON. 
 
 FROM "ARETHUSA" 
 
 Then Alpheus bold, 
 On his glacier cold, 
 
100 
 
 With his trident the mountains struck ; 
 
 And opened a chasm 
 
 In the rocks ; with the spasm 
 All Erymanthus shook. 
 
 And the black south wind 
 
 It concealed behind 
 The urns of silent snow, 
 
 And earthquake and thunder 
 
 Did rend in sunder 
 The bars of the springs below. 
 
 The beard and the hair 
 
 Of the River-god were 
 Seen through the torrent's sweep, 
 
 As he followed the light 
 
 Of the fleet nymph's flight 
 To the brink of the Dorian deep. 
 
 PHILIP, MY KING 
 
 "Who bears upon his baby brow the round and top of sov- 
 ereignty." 
 
 Look at me with thy large brown eyes, 
 
 Philip, my king ! 
 
 For round thee the purple shadow lies 
 Of babyhood's royal dignities. 
 Lay on my neck thy tiny hand 
 
 With Love's invisible sceptre laden ; 
 1 am thine Esther, to command 
 Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden, 
 Philip, my king ! 
 
 Oh, the day when thou goest a- wooing, 
 Philip, my king ! 
 
101 
 
 When those beautiful lips 'gin suing, 
 And, some gentle heart's bars undoing, 
 Thou dost enter, love-crowned, and there 
 
 Sittest love glorified ! Rule kindly, 
 Tenderly over thy kingdom fair ; 
 
 For we that love, ah ! we love so blindly, 
 Philip, my king ! 
 
 I gaze from thy sweet mouth up to thy brow, 
 
 Philip, my king ! 
 
 The spirit that there lies sleeping now 
 May rise like a giant, and make men bow 
 As to one Heaven-chosen amongst his peers, 
 
 My Saul, than thy brethren higher and fairer, 
 Let me behold thee in future years I 
 Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer, 
 Philip, my king 
 
 A wreath, not of gold, but palm. One day, 
 
 Philip, my king ! 
 
 Thou, too, must tread, as we trod, a way 
 Thorny and cruel and cold and gray ; 
 Rebels within thee and foes without 
 Will snatch at thy crown. But march on, 
 
 glorious 
 
 Martyr, yet monarch ! till angels shout, 
 As thou sitt'st at the feet of God victorious,' 
 "Philip, the king!" 
 
 D. M. MULOCK. 
 
Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, in the Editor's Study 
 of HARPER'S MAGAZINE for March, 1895, writes 
 as follows in regard to the author's method : 
 
 Still speaking of our systematical education, 
 it is more and more evident, as we are feeding 
 more and more into it to be ground out in knowl- 
 edge for the individual, that the scheme does not 
 adequately provide for the training of the organ 
 that is to acquire and assimilate the knowledge. 
 Students are set to tasks, and the burden increases 
 with every discovery of science and with our en- 
 larged conception of the world of thought, quite 
 beyond their mental power to manage. The re- 
 sult is intellectual confusion, and often a physical 
 break-down. That which we call the mind is 
 hardly ever trained to do that which is required 
 of it. We treat it as if it were a receptacle which 
 could be stuffed with ideas, instead of a living 
 means of mastering and assimilating ideas. And 
 the distaste for study and the inability to carry 
 on an ordinary school course are commonly due 
 to lack of mental training. The mind is the tool 
 with which the student has to work, and if it is 
 dull and he does not know how to handle it, it is 
 impossible for him to do the work required of 
 him. As well expect an artist or a craftsman to 
 succeed if he has not mastered the means of ex- 
 pressing his thought. 
 
103 
 
 Of course we know that memory is essential in 
 any study ; that is, the power of recalling for use 
 an impression. We also know that this power of 
 recalling an impression depends much upon the 
 vividness with which it is made, the accuracy of 
 it ; and that depends upon our closeness of obser- 
 vation and our fixed attention at the moment. 
 We therefore say that to cultivate the power of 
 accurate observation and fixed attention is the 
 first requisite of mental discipline. This power 
 of fixing the attention it must be a habit con- 
 stantly exercised on anything brought under ob- 
 servation if it is to be valuable is not merely, 
 however, for strengthening the memory, it is an 
 essential mental training for investigation and for 
 clarity of thought and expression every hour. 
 Undeniably our common habit in this respect is 
 bad and slovenly. We do not commonly fix the 
 attention enough to listen intelligently. Take an 
 ordinary conversation at a dinner -table, or be- 
 tween a group of friends, or in a committee meet- 
 ing, and notice how few accurately hear what is 
 said, or comprehend, or keep to the point. This 
 is commonly not from lack of intelligence, but 
 from lack of attention. This slovenly habit not 
 only deprives us of one of the keenest pleasures 
 of life, but it is fatal to intellectual integrity, it is 
 demoralizing to the mental power. The majority 
 of people read with the same feeble attention, 
 and sit out a lecture, or address, or a sermon, in 
 the same inattentive wool-gathering state of mind. 
 
104 
 
 It is easy to test this. Mingle with any dispersing 
 lecture audience, and see how few have intelli- 
 gently followed the lecturer, or comprehended 
 his argument and purpose, or taken his emphatic 
 points, or can give anything like an analysis or a 
 coherent statement of what has been said in their 
 hearing. It has, as we say, gone into one ear and 
 out at the other ; probably very little of it has 
 passed through the head even in that way. And 
 the damage to the auditor is not in what he has 
 missed for the lecture or sermon may be value- 
 less but in the mental demoralization the process 
 causes him. He is confirming a habit of inatten- 
 tion that is disadvantageous to him in anything 
 he may attempt./ It may not be important that 
 he should go to any lecture, but if he does go 'it 
 is all-important to his mind that he should give 
 his fixed and best attention to it, irrespective of 
 its quality ; that he listen to it with an absorption 
 that would enable him not only to follow it step 
 by step, but to reproduce a complete analysis of 
 it when he gets home. One great cause of the 
 mental demoralization of the majority of people 
 is the way they hear sermons and lectures.) They 
 hear without hearing, they do not fix their atten- 
 tion, their minds are not active on the thing in 
 hand, and the result is cultivation of lack of men- 
 tal power. I mean, of course, half -listening, the 
 listless attitude, which catches now and then a 
 sentence or an illustration, but mingles what is 
 said with a confused muddle of its own wander- 
 
105 
 
 ing thoughts. The person who goes to sleep at 
 church, or who never pretends to hear a word 
 from the pulpit, but follows out a train of con- 
 secutive thought of his own, will sustain no dam- 
 age. People sometimes have odd ideas of wor- 
 ship. Their attention, or lack of attention, to the 
 sermon has no relation to worship, but it does 
 concern the power of the mind. 
 
 I have said that memory, as well as mental vig- 
 or for investigation, depends upon this power of 
 attention. But we have to recognize personal 
 differences in memory. No matter what the train- 
 ing is, some memories are much more retentive 
 than others, and this difference does not depend 
 upon the ease or the difficulty with which the 
 impression is made. With some the single read- 
 log of a poem enables them to recall it for an in- 
 definite time ; with others, the utmost labor of 
 memorizing will only enable them to recall it for 
 a little while. But with all, the power of atten- 
 tion will greatly improve the working quality of 
 the memory. 
 
 Can this power of attention be taught, and is it 
 essential in our increasingly widening system of 
 education ? 
 
 In this connection it seems a public service to 
 give the widest publicity to a method of mind- 
 training, or "concentrated attention/' practised 
 by Miss Catharine Aiken in her girl's school in 
 Stamford, Connecticut. The training there, which 
 occupies not more than twenty minutes a day, is 
 
106 
 
 distinctly a means to an end. It is well known 
 that most students are at a disadvantage in at- 
 tacking any subject, because their minds are un- 
 trained. To fix the attention is necessary in any 
 occupation. Can the power of doing so be cul- 
 tivated ? Is there any means of cultivating the 
 habit of concentrating the attention ? If there 
 is, then it is evident that the student will be 
 saved a vast amount of mental drudgery, and 
 will economize time which is so often wasted in 
 study hours. 
 
 The means in use at Stamford are very simple. 
 
 There is used a variety of exercises with the sole 
 object of concentrating the attention. Others are 
 practised upon individual pupils. In all cases 
 the inspiration of the moment urges the pupil to 
 concentrated attention. Cognate to this is the 
 cultivation of the art of listening. As this power 
 of continuous attention increased with practice, 
 the pupils could repeat long passages of prose 
 and poetry heard but once. Incidentally, of 
 course, were taught by this exercise the princi- 
 ples of rhetoric in the proper structure and forms 
 of sentences. 
 
 I am able to add some testimony as to the value 
 of this method. A lecturer recently read a some- 
 what technical paper to this school on English 
 language. The girls listened intently. The fol- 
 lowing week, at the occasion of the next lecture, 
 he was shown the reports of the first. Most of 
 these reports astonished him : they were so supe- 
 
107 
 
 rior to any other reporters' work that he had seen 
 that he was certain they were accomplished by 
 the use of stenography. They were a complete 
 analysis of the whole lecture, the substance and 
 form, and to a surprising extent the phraseology 
 as he said, " Why, they had the whole thing." 
 There had been, however, no stenography, nor 
 any extended note taking. The work was the 
 result of the cultivation of the art of listening 
 and of concentrated attention. 
 
 Owing to the popular notion that anybody 
 can teach, and that teaching must be cheap, we 
 have had cheap teaching in this country, especially 
 in the lower schools, where untrained girls have 
 been paid all they were worth. The Study has 
 had something to say about the employment of 
 incompetent teachers, the majority of them being 
 women. It now desires to call attention to the 
 fact that in the recent educational awakening, 
 and the training of girls for their profession, two 
 of the most important contributions to the science 
 of education in our schools have been made by 
 women : Miss Mary Burt's method of beginning 
 with literature in the education of the very young, 
 and Miss Catharine Aiken's method of mind-train- 
 ing or concentrated attention. 
 
The author has received numerous letters in re- 
 gard to the success of Jier method of mental training, 
 from which the following are selected : 
 
 VASSAR COLLEGE, POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y., 
 
 May 10, 1889, 
 
 DEAR MADAM, I am glad to read your little 
 book on mind -training. You will, perhaps, re- 
 member my call at your school. I was deeply 
 impressed by the results you had gained, and 
 have repeatedly spoken of them to others. I do 
 not think you can tell the half; the work must 
 be seen in its progress to be fully appreciated. The 
 results of your plan seemed to me remarkable. 
 With kind regards, I am, very truly yours, 
 
 J. M. TAYLOR. 
 
 CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS., 
 
 Sept. 13, 1895. 
 
 DEAR Miss AIKEN, The exercises which I saw 
 in your school interested me greatly. I should 
 not have thought such rapidity and certainty 
 possible had I not seen it. The value of such 
 work, as one factor of mental training, I should 
 certainly think was very great, and 1 am glad 
 there is some prospect of your methods being 
 published, so that we can know more of them. 
 I am, very sincerely yours, 
 
 G. STANLEY HALL. 
 
109 
 
 NEW YORK, Sept. 19, 1895. 
 
 MY DEAR Miss AIKEN, Though we had 
 planned to send our daughter elsewhere before 
 seeing the results of your method, we have de- 
 cided to give her the benefit of your superior 
 training for a year. 
 
 I was much impressed by what I saw and heard 
 of your commencement exercises, and since then 
 have described to many your method of fixing 
 attention and of cultivating the memory. 
 
 If I could have had that training when a boy 
 I should have put forty years into the last twenty. 
 
 I greatly regret that our son and our oldest 
 daughter cannot have the benefit of it. Yours, 
 with great esteem, 
 
 JOSIAH STRONG. 
 
 I have been an unhappy witness of Miss Aikin'S 
 methods of memory training on more than one oc- 
 casion; unhappy because the young people pres- 
 ent so easily distanced me in every test to which 
 she put them. I would give much to possess the 
 alertness, accuracy, and concentration which she 
 develops in her pupils by means of her interest- 
 ing exercises. 
 
 KATE DOUGLAS WIG GIN. 
 
 106 East 74th Street, New York, 
 
 November 4th, 1895. 
 
 MY DEAR Miss AIKEN, It gives me great 
 pleasure to tell you of the success I have had 
 
110 
 
 with your exercises for concentration. They 
 have been particularly satisfactory with my piano 
 pupils in memorizing their pieces. In several in- 
 stances the results have been remarkable. In 
 every case I have observed an awakening of all 
 the faculties. 
 
 I am very glad that you propose publishing a 
 text-book upon the subject, for I am convinced 
 that the system applied by a judicious teacher 
 will go far to revolutionize old methods. Very 
 truly yours, 
 
 MARY H. BURN HAM. 
 
 THE END 
 
Halleck's Psychology and 
 Psychic Culture 
 
 BY REUBEN POST HALLECK, M.A. (Yale) 
 Cloth, 12mo, 368 pages. Illustrated .... Price $1 .25 
 
 This new text-book in Psychology and Psychic Culture 
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 treated in such an attractive manner and relieved by so 
 many apt illustrations and examples as to fix the attention 
 and deeply impress the mind. 
 
 The work includes a full statement and clear exposition 
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 with its aims and purpose. 
 
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 interesting, and full of common sense and originality of illustration. 
 I can sincerely recommend it." 
 
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Mind-Training 
 
 BY CATHARINE AIKEN 
 
 AIKEN'S METHODS OF MIND-TRAINING 
 
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 Cloth, I2mo. 122 pages , , , > . ..-.. . $1.00 
 
 For many years there has been a growing dissatisfaction 
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 school it is often found that students have formed no 
 habits of attention, or of accurate observation and dis- 
 crimination, and consequently have no power for logical 
 thought and consecutive study. 
 
 To remedy these evils Miss Aiken introduced into her 
 school new methods of training the mind. Her efforts 
 resulted in extraordinary success and attracted the atten- 
 tion of the foremost educators throughout the country. 
 For the benefit of others she has been induced to embody 
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Manual of the Constitution of the 
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Gateway Series of English Texts 
 
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