The Durham daily globe. (Durham, N.C.) 1889-1894, 1893-02-09
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Lamar's Great Facility in Absorbing the
Contents of a Book.

Lamar's Great Facility in Absorbing the
Contents of a Book.
The death of Justice Lamar, the Au-
gusta Chronicle says, recalls a trait or
faculty which he possessed in a remarka
BILE degree. 1t has been said of him that
he was able to read newspaper article
or a page of a book at what seemed to
the observer to be but a glance. Mani
testify this faculty or capacity gave hin
great advantage over ordinary men. He
was able to deYour books as if he were a
literary glutton, with the difference that
his powerful memory enabled him to di-
gest at leisure what he had absorbed in
haste.
Macauley possessed the sa me faculty,
perhaps in yet higher degree. He would
take up a volume for an evenings intel
~lectual enjoyment, and before he retired
he had the contents fully impressed upon
his marvellous mind. Dickens was an
other of these remarkably rapid readers
George EliOt's Adam Bede came to him
one day. Before his ordinary bedtime
he had read it and had pronounced this
remarkable dictum: "That book was
written by a woman" Others required
days of leisure to read it, and the ques-
ton of the authorship was the riddle Of
the time in literary circles, Charles Sum-
ner was another man who possessed this
happy faculty.
A book, whether it was a volume of
law, or of diplomatic correspondence, or
a work of fiction, passed under his eye
as if by a quick succession of g~lances. 1t
was the same with Daniel Webster, who
himself stated to a friend that when in
college he read Don Qaixote in a single
night. In the case of both these distin-
guished men, what they read in this way
reappeared in a new dress in their
speeches and in their writings. OF o
a retentive memory vas necessary to
render the results of this rapid reading
available but it Is plain that in their
capacity to read rapidly they possessed
an enormous advantage over their fel-
lowmen, and the question arises: Is is
possible to develop this faculty and make
it generally useful in the vast null.
DUPLICATION Of books?
1t is impossible for the average reader
to keep pace with the production merely
of the best, to say nothing of turning
backward to the wealth of the past. In
deed, in the hurry of modern life, it is
scarcely possible for the business man,
for the society woman, or the more mod
est housewife, to keep pace with the
newspapers and snatch an occasional
hour for the magazine. To all of these
it would be an inestimable boon if they
had the faculty of grasping sentences,
paragraphs, and perhaps pages at a little
more than a glance. No one but the
most illiterate pays attention to the
letters of which a word is composed.
Is it not impossible that by cultivation
the average reader might catch words
and sentences as letters are now caught
by the most Indifferent readers? A vast
deal of energy is now devoted to teach
ing pupils TO read more or less effect
lively in public. There is careful atten-
ton paid to articulation, to meditation,
infection, emphasis-all tending towards
slowness rather han rapidity in reading.
What would be the result of changing
the aim, and consequently deliberately
modifying the process, in our public
schools? Is it not possible that with
proper training in the more advanced
grades-perhaps in the very lowest
children might be sent forth from the
schools with something of the capacity
which gave Macaulay. Dickens, Sumner,
Webster and Lamar their tremendous
advantage over others to grasp the mean
ing and the thought of an author with
out dwelling upon the separate words
which expressed that thought? 1t is
certainly something worth thinking of
and discussing seriously. The burden
of the best literature alone is already
something almost beyond the capacity
of the mind. Life is short and cares are
pressing. Is not there something that
can be done for the men and women who
are to come after US, even though We
have missed what a few rare minds DOS
sessed by accident? The subject is a
least worth the consideration of educa
tors, and it has heretofore been almost
wholly ignored.