The table of contents is never so valuable as the index. This always comes at the end of the book. If the work is in more than one volume the index comes at the end of the last volume. What did you learn of the topic gestures in this book from your reference to the table of contents? Now look at the index. What does the index do for a topic? If a topic is treated in various parts of a long work the volumes are indicated by Roman numerals, the pages by ordinary numerals.
Interpret this entry taken from the index of A History of the United States by H.W. Elson.
Slavery, introduced into Virginia, i, 93; in South Carolina, 122; in Georgia, 133; in New England, 276; in the South, 276; during colonial period, iii, 69, 70; in Missouri, 72; attacked by the Abolitionists, 142-6; excluded from California, 184; character of, in the South, 208 seq.; population, iv, 82; abolished in District of Columbia, in new territories, 208; abolished by Thirteenth Amendment, 320, 321.
Retaining Knowledge. The only valid test of the reader's real equipment is what he retains and can use. How much of what you read do you remember? The answer depends upon education, training in this particular exercise, and lapse of time. What method of remembering do you find most effective in your own case? To answer this you should give some attention to your own mind. What kind of mind have you? Do you retain most accurately what you see? Can you reproduce either exactly or in correct substance what you read to yourself without any supporting aids to stimulate your memory? If you have this kind of mind develop it along that line. Do not weaken its power by letting it lean on any supports at all. If you find you can do without them, do not get into the habit of taking notes. If you can remember to do everything you should do during a trip downtown don't make a list of the items before you go. If you can retain from a single reading the material you are gathering, don't make notes. Impress things upon your memory faculty. Develop that ability in yourself.
Have you a different kind of mind, the kind which remember best what it tells, what it explains, what it does? Do you fix things in your brain by performing them? Does information become rooted in your memory because you have imparted it to others? If so you should secure the material you gather from your reading by adapting some method related to the foregoing. You may talk it over with some one else, you may tell it aloud to yourself, you may imagine you are before an audience and practise impressing them with what you want to retain. Any device which successfully fixes knowledge in your memory is legitimate. You should know enough about your own mental processes to find for yourself the best and quickest way. It is often said of teachers that they do not actually feel that they know a subject until they have tried to teach it to others.
Taking Notes. Another kind of mind recalls or remembers material it has read when some note or hint suggests all of it. This kind of mind depends upon the inestimably valuable art of note-taking, a method quite as worthy as the two just considered if its results justify its employment. Note-taking does not mean a helter-skelter series of exclamatory jottings. It means a well-planned, regularly organized series of entries so arranged that reference to any portion recalls vividly and exactly the full material of the original. Books and speeches are well planned. They follow a certain order. Notes based upon them should reproduce that plan and show the relative value of parts.
When completed, such notes, arranged in outline form, should enable the maker to reproduce the extended material from which they were made. If he cannot do that, his reading and his note-taking were to little purpose. A speaker who has carefully written out his full speech and delivers it form the manuscript can use that speech over and over again. But that does not indicate that he really knows much about the topic he is discussing. He did know about it once. But the man who from a series of notes can reconstruct material worked up long before proves that he has retained his knowledge of it. Besides, this method gives him the chance to adapt his presentation to the changing conditions and the new audience.
In using this method, when a particularly important bit of information is met, it should be set down very carefully, usually verbatim, as it may be quoted exactly in the speech. This copy may be made upon the paper where the regular notes are being entered so that it may be found later embodied in the material it supports. Or it may later be cut from this sheet to be shifted about and finally fixed when planning the speech, or preparing the outline (discussed in the next two chapters). Many practised speech-makers copy such material upon the regularly sized library catalog cards (3 by 5 inches), some distinguishing by the colors of cards the various kinds of material, such as arguments supporting a position, opposite arguments, refutation, statistics, court judgments, etc. The beginner will find for himself what methods he can use best. Of course he must never let his discriminating system become so elaborate that he consumes unjustifiable time and thought in following its intricate plan.
In all cases of quotations—either verbatim or in resume—the authority must be noted. Author, official title or position, title of work, circumstances, date, volume, page, etc., should be clearly set down. In law cases the date is especially important as so frequently the latest decision reverses all the earlier ones. For convenience of filing and handling these items are placed at the top of the card.