Volume 1 Number 40
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Editorial
We have just received the following letter from a reader of The Mentor: "I have examined with great care and profit a copy of The Mentor just received. There is only one suggestion that I can make towards its improvement, and that is that on the back of the photogravures there should be a pronunciation scheme for all foreign names. Not everyone who reads is able to pronounce properly the Spanish, French, or Italian; particularly is this true of names and places. The pronunciation might be put in brackets right after the names, or made a sort of marginal affair."
This is the kind of letter we like to get. The suggestion is a good one. We wrote at once to the writer, saying that pronunciation would be indicated wherever foreign names were used. We have done so in the text pages of The Mentor—our readers know that. We have not been doing it in the stories printed on the back of The Mentor gravures. There was no reason for not doing it. The indication of pronunciations should accompany foreign names wherever they are used. The writer of the above has done us a real service in calling attention to the matter. We wish that readers would write to us whenever they have a suggestion that they think would add to the value and usefulness of The Mentor.
Half knowledge on any subject is not of much use. The case of a college professor comes to mind. He was very strong on what he called "completing a thought and finishing a fact." He said that as a man walked through life or looked through books he was constantly in an atmosphere of information—that facts were darting like meteors all about him. He said that the habit of mind of most people was slovenly. Such complete facts as come to their attention are perhaps absorbed. Half facts come along, and most people do not "follow them up to a finish." The habit of this professor was to carry a memorandum pad in his pocket, and whenever he would hear a statement or receive a bit of knowledge he would jot down a note and then, in some leisure moment, look the matter up in an authoritative reference book, thereby completing his information and, as he put it, "sewing it up good and tight" for future use.
The result is that that college professor knows what he knows thoroughly and accurately. He is never heard saying, as so many do when a subject is mentioned, "Oh, what about that. I have had bits of information concerning it from time to time. What does it mean?" The professor had looked up the matter when he got his first bit of information, and, as a result, he had digested the subject and in his way owned it.