I want to call your attention to a valuable book for every student’s table—“Roget’s Thesaurus.” It enables one to find a whole family of words by knowing one of them. The classification is well nigh perfect. Phrases, as well as words, are included in the list. For example, look into the index for the word “circle.” Your attention is called at once to paragraph 181, which gives synonymous words of circle, as defining a “region:” sphere, ground, soil, area, realm, hemisphere, quarter, district, beat, orb, circuit, circle; pale; compartment, department; domain, tract, territory, country, canton, county, shire, province, arrondissement, parish, township, commune, ward, wapentake, hundred, riding; principality, duchy, kingdom, etc. Or we turn to the word circle, as “form,” in paragraph 247, where we have: circle, circlet, ring, areola, hoop, roundlet, annulus, annulet, bracelet, armlet; ringlet; eye, loop, wheel; cycle, orb, orbit, rundle, zone, belt, cordon, band; sash, girdle, cestus, cincture, baldric, fillet, fascia, wreath, garland; crown, corona, coronet, chaplet, snood, necklace, collar; noose, lasso. Or take the word circle as a “party,” paragraph 712, where we find: party, side, faction, denomination, communion, set, crew, band, horde, posse, phalanx; family, clan, etc., etc.; community, body, fellowship, sodality, solidarity; confraternity; brotherhood, sisterhood, etc., etc., and so on through one thousand paragraphs, filling 429 pages, and then followed by a four-columned index on each page for 271 more pages. The book is indeed a treasury of the English language. Price, sent to members of the C. L. S. C., $1.60.
The Cincinnati local circle has great enterprise. It announces a third annual course of free lectures for the coming winter. Our correspondent, Miss Eleanor C. O’Connell, writes: “We are now planning for the organization of a branch ‘Society of the Hall in the Grove,’ for, besides having an alumnal meeting, it is our desire that next year, and each succeeding one, the older graduates shall give in October a reception to the last graduating class, and thus, by welcoming them into this fraternity, help keep up their interest in the Circle. I hope that when you come we will have a good report to make concerning ’82 welcoming those of this year.”
Have you put our “university property” in order? Have you a cozy corner in your house belonging to the C. L. S. C.? Is the “dormitory” well ventilated? Is the food in the “refectory” healthful? Are the “hours of reading” regularly observed?
Such words as these are refreshing: “Though only a two-year-old Chautauquan, I feel that these two years have been richer and more valuable to me than twice their number before. They have indeed changed the whole tenor of my life. Next year I expect to attend Michigan University as a result of the work of the C. L. S. C. I feel that whatever may be the degree of usefulness which I hope to reach, it will be owing to the inspiration received from my present course of reading.”
While members of the C. L. S. C. should read the whole series of books prescribed, each member should select one book to which he is to give especial attention. The others are books for outlook; this is a book for mental discipline. He must master it, drill himself on it, study it critically, doing with it what, if he had the time, he would do with every book of the course.