I shouldn't be surprised if you thought that an index was the dullest part of a book.
But it all depends! As a matter of fact, with your help, I am sure I can make this index of ours one of the most interesting things in the whole story; for, like the H. & S., it gives you a chance to "come into the game." The mind enjoys books and grows upon them much as the body grows on food, but, as in the case of both food and books—and books are food—the good you get depends not only on the food but how you season it and eat it. You can't expect everything of the cook!
Everybody knows, of course, how to use an index to look things up once in a while and it saves time if the index not only tells the page on which a given subject is referred to, but conveys some idea of what that reference is about, as this index tries to do. If, for example, you are studying the Alpine regions in school you may already have covered the question of how flowing water carves mountain valleys, but you may not have had anything about why the Alps don't run north and south, as so many of earth's great ranges do; and so what could be a more interesting thing for you to take into those delightful class discussions?
Your teacher knows, although you may not have realized it, that these class talks and debates by the pupils themselves are the big thing in modern teaching. The best education, we know nowadays, isn't the mere cramming down of facts, as people used to think. It's training in thinking, and in standing on one's own feet!
But memory training is important too; and an index is the best thing in the world for that. Take some subject you're studying in school—mountains, for example—they're always studying such big things as mountains, the work of rivers, and so on; or if they aren't to-day they will be tomorrow. Look at the references as questions to yourself and see how well you can answer them: "How do mountains help make water-gates for the rivers?" and "Why do they have earthquakes in regions where mountains haven't got done with their growing?"
Then you can have a lot of fun with these questions at home and with boy friends, after you have read the book together. For instance: Just how did the pebbles help dig the Grand Canyon? And that's a poser for many grown people too—people who've travelled and met the Grand Canyon face to face! Try it on Father. Yes, and Teacher too. There are none of her boys that a teacher is so proud of as the boys that have initiative—go-aheaditiveness—and can ask good questions as well as answer them.
But, best of all, you can find no end of things to write about for your language work in school and for the little books of your own that I've already suggested in the H. & S. Take the subject of pebbles, for example. Although this whole book has to do with the life and adventures of pebbles, I haven't put the facts together in just the way you will if you follow out the references under the heading "Pebbles" in this index. If you don't happen to remember how pebbles act as bankers for the farmers, how they helped make the Great Lakes, built the Grand Canyon, and so on, look these things up and then, as they thus become digested in your mind, write about them in your own way—the way you'd talk if you were telling somebody about it. Do that and you'll have something! one of those things that mothers show to the neighbors, and that teachers show to visitors.
Of course you'll have to have a name for your story and you'll think of plenty: "What One of My Pebbles Told Me," "The Pebbles in the World's Work," "What a Wonderful Thing a Pebble Is!" "Why Common Pebbles are Worth More than Diamonds"; for of course a diamond is a kind of pebble.
GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH YOURSELF
In all this you will not only find you'll have a good time, but, let me tell you, you'll be getting the best part of your education; you'll be getting acquainted with yourself, your undeveloped powers of memory—reasoning—expression. You'll find before you get so very old that one of the most important elements of success, of doing your part in the world's great work of making itself better all the time, is in having something worth while to say and being able to say it.