How to Do It

by Edward Everett Hale

"But, my dear Mr. Hale," says as good a girl as Laura, "how am I going to help myself? What I remember I remember, and what I do not remember I do not. I should be very glad to remember all the books I have read, and all that is in them; but if I can't, I can't, and there is the end of it."

No! my dear Laura, that is not the end of it. And that is the reason this paper is written. A child of God can, before the end comes, do anything she chooses to, with such help as he is willing to give her; and he has been kind enough so to make and so to train you that you can train your memory to remember and to recall the useful or the pleasant things you meet in your reading. Do you know, Laura, that I have here a note you wrote when you were eight years old? It is as badly written as any note I ever saw. There are also twenty words in it spelled wrong. Suppose you had said then, "If I can't, I can't, and there's an end of it." You never would have written me in the lady-like, manly handwriting you write in to-day, spelling rightly as a matter of mere feeling and of course, so that you are annoyed now that I should say that every word is spelled correctly. Will you think, dear Laura, what a tremendous strain on memory is involved in all this? Will you remember that you and Miss Sears and Miss Winstanley, and your mother, most of all, have trained your memory till it can work these marvels? All you have to do now in your reading is to carry such training forward, and you can bring about such a power of classification and of retention that you shall be mistress of the books you have read for most substantial purposes. To read with such results is reading indeed. And when I say I want to give some hints how to read, it is for reading with that view.

When Harry and Lucy were on their journey to the sea-side, they fell to discussing whether they had rather have the gift of remembering all they read, or of once knowing everything, and then taking their chances for recollecting it when they wanted it. Lucy, who had a quick memory, was willing to take her chance. But Harry, who was more methodical, hated to lose anything he had once learned, and he thought he had rather have the good fairy give him the gift of recollecting all he had once learned. For my part, I quite agree with Harry. There are a great many things that I have no desire to know. I do not want to know in what words the King of Ashantee says, "Cut off the heads of those women." I do not want to know whether a centipede really has ninety-six legs or one hundred and four. I never did know. I never shall. I have no occasion to know. And I am glad not to have my mind lumbered up with the unnecessary information. On the other hand, that which I have once learned or read does in some way or other belong to my personal life. I am very glad if I can reproduce that in any way, and I am much obliged to anybody who will help me.

For reading, then, the first rules, I think, are: Do not read too much at a time; stop when you are tired; and, in whatever way, make some review of what you read, even as you go along.

Capel Lofft says, in quite an interesting book, which plays about the surface of things without going very deep, which he calls Self-Formation, [Footnote: Self-Formation. Crosby and Nichols. Boston. 1845.] that his whole life was changed, and indeed saved, when he learned that he must turn back at the end of each sentence, ask himself what it meant, if he believed it or disbelieved it, and, so to speak, that he must pack it away as part of his mental furniture before he took in another sentence. That is just as a dentist jams one little bit of gold-foil home, and then another, and then another. He does not put one large wad on the hollow tooth, and then crowd it all in at once. Capel Lofft says that this reflection--going forward as a serpent does, by a series of backward bends over the line--will make a dull book entertaining, and will make the reader master of every book he reads, through all time. For my part, I think this is cutting it rather fine, this chopping the book up into separate bits. I had rather read as one of my wisest counsellors did; he read, say a page, or a paragraph of a page or two, more or less; then he would look across at the wall, and consider the author's statement, and fix it on his mind, and then read on. I do not do this, however. I read half an hour or an hour, till I am ready, perhaps, to put the book by. Then I examine myself. What has this amounted to? What does he say? What does he prove? Does he prove it? What is there new in it? Where did he get it? If it is necessary in such an examination you can go back over the passage, correct your first impression, if it is wrong, find out the meaning that the writer has carelessly concealed, and such a process makes it certain that you yourself will remember his thought or his statement.

I can remember, I think, everything I saw in Europe, which was worth seeing, if I saw it twice. But there was many a wonder which I was taken to see in the whirl of sight-seeing, of which I have no memory, and of which I cannot force any recollection. I remember that at Malines--what we call Mechlin--our train stopped nearly an hour. At the station a crowd of guides were shouting that there was time to go and see Rubens's picture of----, at the church of----. This seemed to us a droll contrast to the cry at our stations, "Fifteen minutes for refreshments!" It offered such aesthetic refreshment in place of carnal oysters, that purely for the frolic we went to see. We were hurried across some sort of square into the church, saw the picture, admired it, came away, and forgot it,--clear and clean forgot it! My dear Laura, I do not know what it was about any more than you do. But if I had gone to that church the next day, and had seen it again, I should have fixed it forever on my memory. Moral: Renew your acquaintance with whatever you want to remember. I think Ingham says somewhere that it is the slight difference between the two stereoscopic pictures which gives to them, when one overlies the other, their relief and distinctness. If he does not say it, I will say it for him now.

I think it makes no difference how you make this mental review of the author, but I do think it essential that, as you pass from one division of his work to another, you should make it somehow.

Another good rule for memory is indispensable, I think,--namely, to read with a pencil in hand. If the book is your own, you had better make what I may call your own index to it on the hard white page which lines the cover at the end. That is, you can write down there just a hint of the things you will be apt to like to see again, noting the page on which they are. If the book is not your own, do this on a little slip of paper, which you may keep separately. These memoranda will be, of course, of all sorts of things. Thus they will be facts which you want to know, or funny stories which you think will amuse some one, or opinions which you may have a doubt about. Suppose you had got hold of that very rare book, "Veragas's History of the Pacific Ocean and its Shores"; here might be your private index at the end of the first volume:--

Percentage of salt in water, 11: Gov. Revillagigedo, 19: Caciques and potatoes, 23: Lime water for scurvy, 29. Enata, Kanaka, ἀνήρ ἀνά? 42: Magelhaens vs. Wilkes, 57: Coral insects, 20: Gigantic ferns, 84, &c., &c., &c.

Very likely you may never need one of these references; but if you do, it is certain that you will have no time to waste in hunting for them. Make your memorandum, and you are sure.