The list of errata, the printer's public confession of fault, is rather rare in modern books, but this is due as much to the indifference of the public as to better proofreading. When Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia" took the reading world by storm, a New York reprint was issued, which we commend to anyone looking for classical examples of misprinted books. It averages perhaps a gross misprint to every page. Possibly extreme haste to beat the Boston edition in the market may have suggested dispensing with the proof reader. Of course a publisher who could so betray his customers would never offer them even the partial amends of a list of errata. Sometimes the errors are picked up while the book is still in press, and in that case the list of errata can be printed as an extension of the text; sometimes the best that can be done is to print it on a separate slip or sheet and either insert it in the book or supply it to purchasers. Both these things happened in the case of that early American book, Mather's "Magnalia." The loose list of errata was printed on the two inner pages of one fold the size of the book. In the two hundred years that have elapsed, most of these folded sheets have been lost, with the financial result that a copy of the book with them will bring twice as much as one without them, these two leaves weighing as much in the scales of commerce as the other four hundred. Sometimes a misprint establishes the priority of a copy, the error having been silently corrected while the sheets were going through the press, and thus adds to its value in the eyes of the collector. The extent of these ancient lists of errata staggers belief. Cardinal Bellarmin was obliged to issue an octavo volume of eighty-eight pages to correct the misprints in his published works, and there is on record a still huger list of errata, extending to one hundred and eleven quarto pages.
But we must not suppose that misprints began with the invention of printing. The name did, but not the thing named. In earlier times it was the copyist who made the mistakes and bore the blame. It is easy to see how in Greece and Rome, when one reader read aloud a book which perhaps a hundred copyists reproduced, a great number of errors might creep into the copies, and how many of these would result from confusion in hearing. Every copy was then an edition by itself and a possible source of error, calling therefore for its own proofreading. It is accordingly no wonder that the straightening out of classic texts is still going on. Had Chaucer, who wrote over a hundred years before printing was introduced into England, been able to read once for all the proof of his poems, he would not have had to write that feeling address to his copyist, or scrivener, with which we may fitly take leave of our subject.
Adam scryveyne, if ever it thee byfalle,
Boece or Troylus for to wryten nuwe,
Under thy long lokkes thowe most have the scalle,
But affter my makyng thowe wryte more truwe;
So offt a daye I mot thy werk renuwe,
It to corect, and eke to rubbe and scrape,
And al is thorugh thy necglygence and rape.
A SECRET OF PERSONAL POWER
REATER efficiency is the watchword of the hour. The pages of every technical and even educational magazine bristle with it. One is driven to wonder whether the principle does not require that in every printing office the word "efficiency" be stereotyped to save the cost of setting. We are told how one manager of a creamery saved annually the amount of his own salary to the company by having the dents in the supply cans pounded out and so getting more milk from the farmers. But though the lengths to which the insistence on efficiency is carried may sometimes provoke a smile, we have no inclination to disparage it; we realize that efficiency has far more than a mere money value to society; it is rather our purpose in the present paper to ask whether the efficiency man has ever thought to turn his searchlight in upon himself and discover whether he has not latent and unexpected powers that may be evoked to the great increase of his own efficiency.
We have nothing historically new to offer, though the principle we are to mention is practically unknown or at least unutilized. It is the great, controlling principle of Forethought, the application of which is far wider than thought itself, extending to all the functions of the soul and even affecting bodily energy and health. The action of Forethought is based on the fact that there is more to ourselves than we are aware of. We are not ordinarily conscious of our past lives, for instance, yet a supreme crisis, such as falling from a height, may make a man's whole past in an instant flash before him in review. Under sudden stress a man may develop powers of leadership or resolution that nobody could have foreseen and that he himself cannot account for. Our selves as we know them are, so to speak, only the top soil of our entire natures. Every conscious personality is like a farm in an oil district. It is underlain by an unrealized wealth that may never be brought to light. Some accident may reveal the treasure, but if the owner suspects its existence he may bore for it. To show how this boring may be done is one of the purposes of the present paper. But let us first assure ourselves further of the existence of this hidden fund of energy.
If in the early fifties of the last century a vote had been taken on the two men in America who ten years later would stand head and shoulders above their countrymen in position and recognized ability, it is probable that not one single vote would have been cast for a slouchy Missouri farmer or a shabby Illinois lawyer, certainly not for the former. Grant and Lincoln themselves would not have expected a vote. Yet their powers existed then, unrealized by their owners, and only needing the proper stimulus to bring them out. That stimulus was responsibility; and, great as their achievements were under this stimulus, neither man appears to have reached his limit; each apparently had still a fund of reserve power to be expended on yet greater occasions had they arisen. This is not to say that all men have an equal fund of unrecognized ability. The experiences of the great struggle out of which Lincoln and Grant came supreme are alone sufficient to show how unequal are men's endowments. A McClellan proves himself an unsurpassed organizer, but no fighter; a Burnside displays marked ability in leading fifteen or twenty thousand men, but beyond this number he fails disastrously. Neither Foresight nor any other device can create ability. A gallon can will hold only a gallon, no matter how carefully its sides are rounded. But in the case of any given man no one knows his capacity until he has had a chance to show it. His nature may hold only a pint, or, as with the men who have mastered great occasions with still unexhausted powers, it may seem like the horn which the god Thor tried to drain but could not, for its base was connected with the ocean itself. Not every man can hope to be called to a responsibility that shall bring out his latent powers; most of us, if we are ever to get the call, will first have to show the ability.
