Evening star., 1933-11-01

Use OF a pencil in reading has q
great deal to recommend it.
The best readers almost invariably
keep a well-pointed pencil in the right
hand, ready for instant use.
Or the instrument can be kept within
reach: this is necessary, for few read
ers will interrupt their study to search
for pencil.
There are great many good readers
of books who say that they would
as soon not read at all as to 60 with
out pencil while so engaged.
One WaShingtonian we came across
| recently has a system all his own.
| He uses a pencil, not alone for making
marginal notes, the time -honored usage,
| but also for checking where he has
read.
This is not a bad idea.
Many a person has read through
some long book, one which by the world
at large probably Is labeled "heavy"
with some justification, only to find
afterward that the fair pages seemed
| strange to him.
This was largely his own fault.
unless one has marvelously re-
tentlve memory, one will find himself
| unable to remember what he has read
merely by glancing at the pages.
1t almost seems as if he had not read
that way before, so many thousands of
words are piled up there, one after
the other, each one remarkably like the
other, in SO far as they are all written
words.
If he had taken the trouble to emu
late the WaShingtonian of whom we
speak, he would have found that he
had left footsteps in the sands OF
time" indeed.
IhlS gentleman makes a very small
check at the end of every line which
| appeals to him. Usually there is some
key word which strikes his mind, some
ldea which seems to make particu-
lar impression upon him. This he in
stlnct4vely checks with a small mark
on the right margin of a right-hand
page, on the left margin OF a left
hand page.
MS Is his system, mind you. 1t
is not conceivable that another per-
son. reading here, could decide that
it is good one, and thereupon put
it into effect in his own personal read
ing. The man has built up a life
time OF reading with pencil in hand,
| SO checking his own reactions to what
! ilt ID lSdullS.
| Every one, however, can build some
such system for himself, based upon
his own habits and needs.
| X
In the reading of serious works Of
all sorts there is a real need for mark
! ing such pages as actually have been
read, merely to show the owner that he
| has walked that way before. Memory
| is notoriously treacherous, here as else
where. 1t must be a real Pleasure, as
wei as help. to the gentleman men,
toned to be able to see Just where his
rowing mind has been.
He is far better off, as he looks over
his beloved books, than the reader who
| finds his pag IS as unsullied as the day
| he brought them home. But this fea-
! ture of such a system of checking is
small compared with the mental gains.
Such markings, made as one goes
along, undoubtedly enforc many fine
point, cause the ideas of the author
| to coaleSce with the ideas of the reader,
make the good points made by the
writer stand ovt in the readers mind.
Surely there can be no subsequent
reading of a book which will quite
| take the place of the first reading.
! Not in a truly active mind. that Is:
| There are many intelligent persons, OF
course. who find a second or third
! reading of book helpful in many
ways. Such readers are slow. in no
derogatory sense. Speed, despite what
some would have us believe, is not In