The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1904-09-09

Literary Taste Of the Owner Can ~
q; Told BY Wearing Of the
. %8% Pages. IA - 5t3s "

will tell you the bent of his mind.
said the experienced librarian. accord
ing to the Chicago Tribune. ITO In.
sure the success Of tho test two condi-
tons are, necessary. The dictionary
must be the exclusive property Of the
man up for classification and it must
have seen months of service. other
wise his predictions run the risk of
getting mixed up with somebody elso's
or Of appearing only half developed.
stake the letter A for instance. A
is q useful letter, yet in few diction-
aries, relatively speaking, do the pages
in which 1t figures as an initial get
torn to tatters. In cases where they
are more worn than any other division
I can swear to 1t, nine times out Of
ten, that the fellow who owns the book
Is crank on matters historical. st t VI,
when I come across book In
which, the BIS have seen the hardest
service know at once that have got
hold" of another whose hobby is his-
tory, but Of q different kind. He has
a hankering after birds, animals and
insects. M and N also are the happy
hunting grounds of. the fellow whose
mind turns to natural history, still
there is no danger Of confusion in my
deductions If each of the three letters
were soiled separately they might lead
me astray, but the combination is .
sure guide to the taste of the reader.
&C. is the favorite letter Of more
than one class of dictionary fends.
Scientific investigators, such as chem.
lists and botanists. have occasion to
refer to words beginning with G more
frequently than to those beginning
with any other letter. Doctors. too,
find that G plays an important part Id
their vocabulary. There, again, the
system of combinations comes In
handy. ..s'~.;s5 S.s
"People who read medical books,
whether professional men or not. $ap.
parently meet more words to stump
them in the RS and Us than anywhere
else. OF these two, R presents most
difficulties, and it is not strange to
find the dictionary belonging to the
man who is concerned about his own
and other peoples physical organiza-
ton ana the care thereof worn to
strings in R and pretty shabby In +
and c. while the rest of the book IS In
comparatively good condition. S=@
Readers with a religious trend Of
thought find their photographed Wa
terloo pretty strictly confined to the
letter T. When its pages are exces-
sively worn in comparisons with the
rest of the alphabet it is a sure sign
that the owner of the dictionary knows
more about church history than he
could tell in a month. IT. ~ xasz1.
words beginning with 8 are hard
nuts for engineers to crack. Students
in geographical subjects also find many
stunning terms under that letter. How
ever, d is also likely to give them con-
siderable trouble, so by noting the ,rela.
tive usage of the two sections 1t is
possible to distinguish the engineering
from the geographical enthusiast. $.
Mathematical and musical readers
Of the dictionary have a common bond
of sympathy in the letter P, which
introduces most Of their tough propo-
sftions.
Lawyers have occasion to look up
words in M most frequently. Also they
seem to be about the only class of read
ers that have much use Of j.