HOW TO READ TOGETHER PROFITABLY.
After singing, by the choir, “Arise and Shine,” and “The Winds are Whispering,” Dr. Vincent said: “I greet you. We are glad that so many of us are able to be present this afternoon. We are here to-day for a practical question or two in connection with our work as local circles, and then to answer some questions relating to the exercises of the coming Saturday. It is a question of much importance to all who are connected with local circles: How may we promote profitable reading? A local circle is not designed for much reading, but is a place to guide people in reading at home; to make suggestions; to correct blunders; to give new ideas that reading may be prosecuted with economy of time. A large part of almost any book may be omitted by every reader, and yet he may after a fashion read the parts he “omits.” There is a rapid way of running over half a dozen pages when they contain but the expansion or illustration of a thought. You see what the author is after; you have read the half-dozen pages; you have all that is for you in those pages, and saved your time for a page that you can not finish in fifteen minutes or half an hour. It is often the case that when out of a book of three hundred pages you have read forty pages of it studiously, you have the essence of that book.
There are very few men who can write a book, every page of which is worth the concentrated attention of the average reader. Many a book that costs one dollar and a half contains only a half-dollar’s worth. Learn to find and make your own that half-dollar’s worth.
It may be well occasionally in a local circle for one member to read a chapter, or paragraph, or section, of one, two, three, four, or more pages, and let the rest listen, noting every word, watching his pronunciation, or trying to take in all that they can while he reads. The habit of attention while another reads may be more profitable than reading for oneself. When the page has been read in the hearing of the other two, if the circle be a triangle, or the other twenty, if the circle be a very large circle, then let one, two, or three, as many as you have time to hear, try to repeat the substance of what was read. We had at Island Park the other day in a round-table conference, a very interesting exercise of that kind. I took up a book, the newest and last—it was Hatton’s account of a trip through America. I read to them a page of that. I read it so rapidly that it was almost impossible for anybody to follow me. They heard me. I pronounced every word distinctly, but read as rapidly as I could. And there was precious little to recall. And then I read another part of the book very slowly. There were a great many dates in it. It was an account of the settlement of Kansas, and the growth of Kansas and Missouri, and the settlement of Nebraska. I read the figures slowly, but did not repeat. When I finished I closed the book, and then recalled through the class the substance of what I had read. It was very gratifying to find how much they could remember, and to me it was very gratifying to see how many forgot dates, and it was exceedingly gratifying to find one old Presbyterian minister, whose life certainly was not a failure, able to remember all the figures, and he felt very much gratified. Now, an exercise of that kind will do good to everybody in the class, the reader doing his best to give to all the rest a few facts for recollection, and the listeners trying to recall. And what one fails to recall, the others recall, and at last you get out of a class of ten or twenty the substance of all that was read in the hearing of all the members.
Sometimes the reading for the next week or month may be anticipated in a little class. We are, for example, to read a certain chapter this week from Timayenis’s Greek History. “Now, as I have read that chapter,” says the leader, or one of the members, “I find general great ideas, or periods, or points. They are as follows:” Now, no one but himself has read that chapter. He gives them the general great thoughts, or centers, of that chapter or book, which they are to read the coming week. All the members going from that local circle will take up that chapter and read it that week with greater profit than if they had not enjoyed the preview. In the same way have a review of the reading of the last week. Get members to read with thoughtfulness, and with the intention of presenting again what they read. When I read up for entertainment, I read rapidly and with fifty per cent. of my attention. When I read up with a view of reinforcing my position, or preparing myself for a discussion of a subject, I read with one hundred per cent. of my attention. When people read because it must be read, they will read it in one way. When people read for the sake of telling it again, they read it another way, and that other way is the way to read. [Laughter.] And the local circle encouraging the habit of expression, whether in writing or otherwise at the time, will promote attention in reading.
Once in awhile in a local circle, one may read as an illustration of the most profitable way of personal and private reading. For example, let Mr. A. B. take two pages of Timayenis’s Greek, or of the little book on Geology, and let him read two pages, stopping and talking to himself aloud, as he would if alone. He finds a word that he does not understand. He says, “I do not know the meaning of that word. I think it has some reference to so and so.” He turns to his dictionary and finds out what it means. He finds a classical allusion and says, “I do not think I can tell what it means, or how to pronounce that word. I must look in the dictionary. Here is an obscure thought I can not fully understand.” And he reads it over. When a thoughtful man or woman has read through one page of a book in that way, revealing all his thoughts and processes while he reads, he helps other people to read intelligently, slowly, thoughtfully, and they learn the art of reading alone with a mastery of the attention. There might also be five minute synopses of the book. Divide a book that has been read into periods or sections. Miss A. gives a five-minute synopsis of a certain period, Miss B. another, Miss C. another. This review helps everybody to remember.
I think it would be a very good plan for each member of a local circle to mark in his book passages which most impress him. I never read a book which I own, and never a book owned by a friend of mine, whom I know with a tolerable degree of intimacy, without marking it. I have marked the passages that impressed me in every book in my library which I have read. When I mark a book the passages marked are the things in that book that belong to me. I can re-read it in a very short time. I believe there is a strange law of mental affinity, by which a soul takes hold of the thoughts in a book that are for him. I believe if the members were some evening to bring their books, were to have the marked passages read, on given pages, the comparison, the variety and the repetition would all make the exercise extremely interesting and profitable.
Have you additional hints to give about reading in our local circles to profit? Let me hear from you now.
Mr. Martin: How are we to examine the dictionary when the scheme of the first two months of the next year in the required time allows only two minutes to the page?
A Voice: Let them take more time.