Attention has been defined as the fixing of the mind intently upon one particular object, to the exclusion for a time, of all other objects soliciting notice. It is essential to those who would have a good memory, to cultivate a.s.siduously the habit of concentration of thought. As the scattering shot hits no mark, so the scattering and random thoughts that sweep through an unoccupied brain lead to no memorable result, simply from want of attention or of fixation upon some one mental vision or idea. With your attention fastened upon any subject or object, you see it more clearly, and it impresses itself more vividly in the memory, as a natural consequence. Not only so, but its related objects or ideas are brought up by the principle of a.s.sociation, and they too make a deeper impression and are more closely remembered. In fact, one thing carefully observed and memorized, leads almost insensibly to another that is related to it, and thus the faculty of a.s.sociation is strengthened, the memory is stimulated, and the seeds of knowledge are deeply planted in that complex organism which we call the mind. This power of attention, of keeping an object or a subject steadily in view until it is absorbed or mastered, is held by some to be the most distinctive element in genius.
Most people have not this habit of concentration of the mind, but allow it to wander aimlessly on, flitting from subject to subject, without mastering any; but then, most people are not geniuses. The habit to be cultivated is that of thinking persistently of only one thing at a time, sternly preventing the attention from wandering.
It may be laid down as an axiom that the two corner-stones of memory are attention and a.s.sociation. And both of these must act in harmony, the habit of fixed attention being formed or guided by the will, before a normal or retentive memory becomes possible. What is called cultivating the memory, therefore, does not mean anything more than close attention to whatever we wish to remember, with whatever a.s.sociations naturally cling to it, until it is actually mastered. If one has not an instinctive or naturally strong memory, he should not rest satisfied with letting the days go by until he has improved it. The way to improve it, is to begin at the foundation, and by the constant exercise of the will-power, to take up every subject with fixed attention, and one at a time, excluding every other for the time being. There is no doubt whatever that the memory is capable of indefinite improvement; and though one"s first efforts in that direction may prove a disappointment, because only partially successful, he should try, and try again, until he is rewarded with the full fruits of earnest intellectual effort, in whatever field.
He may have, at the start, instead of a fine memory, what a learned professor called, "a fine forgettery," but let him persevere to the end.
None of us were made to sit down in despair because we are not endowed with an all-embracing memory, or because we cannot "speak with the tongues of men and of angels," and do not know "all mysteries and all knowledge." It rather becomes us to make the best and highest use, day by day, of the talents that are bestowed upon us, remembering that however short of perfection they may be, we are yet far more gifted than myriads of our fellow-creatures in this very imperfect world.
There is no question that the proper cultivation of the memory is, or ought to be, the chief aim of education. All else is so dependent upon this, that it may be truly affirmed that, without memory, knowledge itself would be impossible. By giving up oneself with fixed attention to what one seeks to remember, and trusting the memory, though it may often fail, any person can increase his powers of memory and consequently of learning, to an indefinite degree. To improve and strengthen the memory, it must be constantly exercised. Let it be supplied with new knowledge frequently, and called on daily to reproduce it. If remembered only imperfectly or in part, refresh it by reference to the source whence the knowledge came; and repeat this carefully and thoroughly, until memory becomes actually the store-house of what you know on that subject. If there are certain kinds of facts and ideas which you more easily forget than others, it is a good way to practice upon them, taking up a few daily, and adding to them by degrees. Dr. W. T. Harris, the United States Commissioner of Education, gave his personal experience to the effect that he always found it hard to remember dates. He resolved to improve a feeble memory in this respect by learning the succession of English Kings, from William the Conqueror, down to Victoria. With his characteristic thoroughness, he began by learning three or four dates of accession only, the first day; two new ones were added the second day; then one new king added the third day; and thereafter even less frequency was observed in learning the chronology. By this method he had the whole table of thirty-six sovereigns learned, and made familiar by constant review. It had to be learned anew one year after, and once again after years of neglect. But his memory for dates steadily grew, and without conscious effort, dates and numbers soon came to be seized with a firmer grasp than before. This kind of memory, he adds, now improves or increases with him from year to year. Here is an instance of cultivation of memory by a notable scholar, who adds a monition to learners with weak memories, not to undertake to memorize too much at once. Learning a succession of fifty names slowly, he says, will so discipline the memory for names, as to partially or even permanently remove all embarra.s.sment from that source. I may add that a long table of names or dates, or any prolonged extract in verse or prose, if learned by repeating it over and over as a whole, will be less tenaciously retained in memory, than if committed in parts.
The highest form of memory is actually unconscious, _i. e._, that in which what we would recall comes to us spontaneously, without effort or lapse of time in thinking about it. It is this kind of memory that has been possessed by all the notable persons who have been credited with knowing everything, or with never forgetting anything. It is not to be reckoned to their credit, so much as to their good fortune. What merit is there in having a good memory, when one cannot help remembering?
There is one caution to be given to those who are learning to improve a memory naturally weak. When such a one tries to recall a date, or name, or place, or idea, or book, it frequently happens that the endeavor fails utterly. The more he tries, the more obstinately the desired object fails to respond. As the poet Pope wrote about the witless author:
"You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come; Knock as you please, there"s n.o.body at home."
In these cases, no attempt to force the memory should be made, nor should the attention be kept long on the subject, for this course only injures the faculty, and leads to confusion of mind. To persist in a constantly baffled effort to recover a word, or other forgotten link in memory, is a laborious attempt which is itself likely to cause failure, and induce a distrust of the memory which is far from rational. The forgotten object will probably recur in no long time after, when least expected.
Much discursive reading is not only injurious to the faculty of memory, but may be positively destructive of it. The vast extent of our modern world of reviews, magazines and newspapers, with their immense variety of subjects, dissipates the attention instead of concentrating it, and becomes fatal to systematic thought, tenacious memory, and the acquirement of real knowledge. The mind that is fed upon a diet of morning and evening newspapers, mainly or solely, will become flabby, uncertain, illogical, frivolous, and, in fact, little better than a scatterbrains. As one who listens to an endless dribble of small talk lays up nothing out of all the palaver, which, to use a common phrase, "goes in at one ear, and out at the other," so the reader who continuously absorbs all the stuff which the daily press, under the pretext of "printing the news," inflicts upon us, is nothing benefited in intellectual gifts or permanent knowledge. What does he learn by his a.s.siduous pursuit of these ephemeral will o" the wisps, that only "lead to bewilder, and dazzle to blind?" He absorbs an incredible amount of empty gossip, doubtful a.s.sertions, trifling descriptions, apocryphal news, and some useful, but more useless knowledge. The only visible object of spending valuable time over these papers appears to be to satisfy a momentary curiosity, and then the ma.s.s of material read pa.s.ses almost wholly out of the mind, and is never more thought of. Says Coleridge, one of the foremost of English thinkers: "I believe the habit of perusing periodical works may be properly added to the catalogue of anti-mnemonics, or weakeners of the memory."
If read sparingly, and for actual events, newspapers have a value which is all their own; but to spend hours upon them, as many do, is mere mental dissipation.
CHAPTER 13.
QUALIFICATIONS OF A LIBRARIAN.
In directing attention to some of the more important elements which should enter into the character and acquirements of a librarian, I shall perhaps not treat them in the order of their relative importance. Thus, some persons might consider the foremost qualification for one aspiring to the position of a librarian to be wide knowledge in literature and science: others would say that the possession of sound common sense is above all things essential; others an excellent and retentive memory; still others might insist that business habits and administrative faculty are all-important; and others again, a zeal for learning and for communicating it to others.
I shall not venture to p.r.o.nounce what, among the mult.i.tude of talents that are requisite to const.i.tute a good librarian is the most requisite.
Suffice it to say, that all of them which I shall notice are important, and that the order of their treatment determines nothing as to which are more and which are less important. So much is expected of librarians that it actually appears as if a large portion of the public were of the opinion that it is the duty of him who has a library in charge to possess himself, in some occult or mysterious way, unknown to the common mind, of all the knowledge which all the books combine.
The Librarian of the British Museum, speaking to a conference of librarians in London, quoted a remark of Pattison, in his "Life of Casaubon," that "the librarian who reads is lost." This was certainly true of that great scholar Casaubon, who in his love for the contents of the books under his charge, forgot his duties as a librarian. And it is to a large degree true of librarians in general, that those who pursue their own personal reading or study during library hours do it at the expense of their usefulness as librarians. They must be content with such s.n.a.t.c.hes of reading as come in the definite pursuit of some object of research incident to their library work, supplemented by such reading time as unoccupied evenings, Sundays, and annual vacations may give them.
Yet nothing is more common than for applicants for the position of librarians or a.s.sistant librarians to base their aspiration upon the foolish plea that they are "so fond of reading", or that they "have always been in love with books." So far from this being a qualification, it may become a disqualification. Unless combined with habits of practical, serious, unremitting application to labor, the taste for reading may seduce its possessor into spending the minutes and the hours which belong to the public, in his own private gratification. The conscientious, the useful librarian, living amid the rich intellectual treasures of centuries, the vast majority of which he has never read, must be content daily to enact the part of Tantalus, in the presence of a tempting and appetizing banquet which is virtually beyond his reach.
But he may console himself by the reflection that comparatively few of the books upon his shelves are so far worth reading as to be essential.
"If I had read as many books as other men," said Hobbes of Malmesbury, "I should have been as ignorant as they."
If the librarian, in the precious time which is indisputably his, reads a wise selection of the best books, the masterpieces of the literature of all lands, which have been consecrated by time and the suffrages of successive generations of readers, he can well afford to apply to the rest, the short-hand method recommended in a former chapter, and skim them in the intervals of his daily work, instead of reading them. Thus he will become sufficiently familiar with the new books of the day (together with the information about their contents and merits furnished by the literary reviews, which he must read, however sparingly, in order to keep up with his profession) to be able to furnish readers with some word of comment as to most books coming into the Library. This course, or as close an approximation to it as his multifarious duties will permit, will go far to solve the problem that confronts every librarian who is expected to be an exponent of universal knowledge. Always refraining from unqualified praise of books (especially of new ones) always maintaining that impartial att.i.tude toward men and opinions which becomes the librarian, he should act the part of a liberal, eclectic, catholic guide to inquirers of every kind.
And here let me emphasize the great importance to every librarian or a.s.sistant of early learning to make the most of his working faculties. He cannot afford to plod along through a book, sentence by sentence, like an ordinary reader. He must learn to read a sentence at a glance. The moment his eye lights upon a t.i.tle-page he should be able to take it all in by a comprehensive and intuitive mental process. Too much stress cannot be laid upon the every-day habit or method of reading. It makes all the difference between time saved, and time wasted; between efficiency and inefficiency; between rapid progress and standing still, in one"s daily work. No pains should be spared, before entering upon the all-engrossing work of a library, to acquire the habit of rapid reading. An eminent librarian of one of the largest libraries was asked whether he did not find a great deal of time to read? His reply was--"I wish that I could ever get as much as one hour a day for reading--but I have never been able to do it." Of course every librarian must spend much time in special researches; and in this way a good deal of some of his days will be spent in acquainting himself with the resources of his library; but this is incidental and not systematic reading.
In viewing the essential qualifications of a librarian, it is necessary to say at the outset that a library is no place for uneducated people.
The requirements of the position are such as to demand not only native talent above the average, but also intellectual acquirements above the average. The more a librarian knows, the more he is worth, and the converse of the proposition is equally true, that the less he knows the less he is worth. Before undertaking the arduous task of guiding others in their intellectual pursuits, one should make sure that he is himself so well-grounded in learning that he can find the way in which to guide them. To do this, he must indispensably have something more than a smattering of the knowledge that lies at the foundation of his profession. He must be, if not widely read, at least carefully grounded in history, science, literature, and art. While he may not, like Lord Bacon, take all knowledge to be his province, because he is not a Lord Bacon, nor if he were, could he begin to grasp the illimitable domain of books of science and literature which have been added to human knowledge in the two centuries and a half since Bacon wrote, he can at least, by wise selection, master enough of the leading works in each field, to make him a well-informed scholar. That great treasury of information on the whole circle of the sciences, and the entire range of literature, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, judiciously studied, will alone give what would appear to the average mind, a very liberal education.
One of the most common and most inconsiderate questions propounded to a librarian is this: "Do you ever expect to read all these books through?"
and it is well answered by propounding another question, namely--"Did _you_ ever read your dictionary through?" A great library is the scholar"s dictionary--not to be read through, but to enable him to put his finger on the fact he wants, just when it is wanted.
A knowledge of some at least of the foreign languages is indispensable to the skilled librarian. In fact, any one aspiring to become an a.s.sistant in any large library, or the head of any small one, should first acquire at least an elementary knowledge of French and Latin. Aside from books in other languages than English which necessarily form part of every considerable library, there are innumerable quotations or words in foreign tongues scattered through books and periodicals in English, which a librarian, appealed to by readers who are not scholars, would be mortified if found unable to interpret them. The librarian who does not understand several languages will be continually at a loss in his daily work. A great many important catalogues, and bibliographies, essential parts of the equipment of a library, will be lost to him as aids, and he can neither select foreign books intelligently nor catalogue them properly. If he depends upon the aid of others more expert, his position will be far from agreeable or satisfactory. How many and what foreign languages should be learned may be matter for wide difference of opinion.
But so far-reaching is the prevalence of the Latin, as one of the princ.i.p.al sources of our own language, and of other modern tongues, that a knowledge of it is most important. And so rich is the literature of France, to say nothing of the vast number of French words constantly found in current English and American books and periodicals, that at least a fairly thorough mastery of that language should be acquired. The same may be said of the German, which is even more important in some parts of the United States, and which has a literature most copious and valuable in every varied department of knowledge. With these three tongues once familiar, the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages may be, through the aid of dictionaries, so far utilized as to enable one to read t.i.tles and catalogue books in any of them, although a knowledge of all, so as to be able to read books in them, is highly desirable.
In the Boston Public Library, the a.s.sistants are required to possess an adequate knowledge of Latin, French, and German. And all candidates for positions in the reading-room of the British Museum Library must undergo a thorough test examination as to their knowledge of the Latin language.
Opportunities for acquiring foreign languages are now so abundant that there is small excuse for any one who wants to know French, Latin or German, and yet goes through life without learning them. There are even ways of learning these languages with sufficient thoroughness for reading purposes without a teacher, and sometimes without a text-book. Two a.s.sistant librarians taught themselves French and German in their evenings, by setting out to read familiar works of English fiction in translations into those languages, and soon acquired a good working knowledge of both, so as to be able to read any work in either, with only occasional aid from the dictionary for the less common words. It is surprising how soon one can acquire a sufficient vocabulary in any language, by reading any of its great writers. A good way for a beginner to learn French without a master is to take a French New Testament, and read the four Gospels through. After doing this three or four times, almost any one who is at all familiar with the Scriptures, will be able to read most books in the French language with facility. In the great art of learning, all doors are easily unlocked--by those who have the key.
It should go without saying that the librarian should possess a wide knowledge of books. This knowledge should include (1) an acquaintance with ancient and modern literature, so as to be able to characterize the notable writers in each of the leading languages of the world; (2) a knowledge of history extensive enough to enable him to locate all the great characters, including authors, in their proper century and country; (3) a knowledge of editions, so as to discriminate between the old and the new, the full and the abridged, the best edited, best printed, etc.; (4) an acquaintance with the intrinsic value or the subject and scope of most of the great books of the world; (5) a knowledge of commercial values, so as to be able to bid or to buy understandingly, and with proper economy; (6) a familiarity with what const.i.tutes condition in library books, and with binding and repairing processes, for the restoration of imperfect volumes for use.
The librarian should be one who has had the benefit of thorough preliminary training, for no novice is qualified to undertake the role of an expert, and any attempt to do so can result only in disappointment and failure. No one who has read little or nothing but novels since leaving school need ever hope to succeed.
No librarian can know too much, since his work brings him into relation with the boundless domain of human knowledge. He should not be a specialist in science (except in the one science of bibliography) but must be content with knowing a little about a great many things, rather than knowing everything about one thing. Much converse with books must fill him with a sense of his own ignorance. The more he comes to know, the wider will open before him the illimitable realm of what is yet to be known. In the lowest deep which research the most profound can reach, there is a lower deep still unattained--perhaps, even, unattainable. But the fact that he cannot by any possibility master all human knowledge should not deter the student from making ever advancing inroads upon that domain. The vast extent of the world of books only emphasizes the need of making a wise selection from the ma.s.s. We are brought inevitably back to that precept by every excursion that we make into whatever field of literature.
The librarian should possess, besides a wide acquaintance with books, a faculty of administration, and this rests upon careful business habits.
He should have a system in all the library work. Every a.s.sistant should have a prescribed task, and be required to learn and to practice all the methods peculiar to library economy, including the economy of time. Each day"s business should be so organized as to show an advance at the end.
The library must of course have rules, and every rule should be so simple and so reasonable that it will commend itself to every considerate reader or library a.s.sistant. All questions of doubt or dispute as to the observance of any regulation, should be decided at once, courteously but firmly, and in a few words. Nothing can be more unseemly than a wrangle in a public library over some rule or its application, disturbing readers who are ent.i.tled to silence, and consuming time that should be given to the service of the public.
When Thomas Carlyle, one of the great scholars of modern times, testified in 1848 before a Parliamentary Commission upon the British Museum Library, he thus spoke of the qualifications of a librarian:
"All must depend upon the kind of management you get within the library itself. You must get a good pilot to steer the ship, or you will never get into the harbor. You must have a man to direct who knows well what the duty is that he has to do, and who is determined to go through that, in spite of all clamor raised against him; and who is not anxious to obtain approbation, but is satisfied that he will obtain it by and by, provided he acts ingenuously and faithfully."
Another quality most important in a librarian is an even temper. He should be always and unfailingly courteous, not only to scholars and visitors of high consideration, but to every reader, however humble or ignorant, and to every employee, however subordinate in position. There is nothing which more detracts from one"s usefulness than a querulous temper. Its possessor is seldom happy himself, and is the frequent cause of unhappiness in others. Visitors and questions should never be met with a clouded brow. A cheerful "good-morning" goes a great way oftentimes.
Many library visitors come in a complaining mood--it may be from long waiting to be served, or from mistake in supplying them with the wrong books, or from errors in charging their accounts, or from some fancied neglect or slight, or from any other cause. The way to meet such ill-humored or offended readers is to gently explain the matter, with that "soft answer which turneth away wrath." Many a foolish and useless altercation may thus be avoided, and the complainant restored to cheerfulness, if not to courtesy; whereas, if the librarian were to meet the case with a sharp or haughty answer, it would probably end without satisfaction on either side. Whatever you do, never permit yourself to be irritable, and resolve never to be irritated. It will make you unhappy, and will breed irritation in others. Cheerfulness under all circ.u.mstances, however difficult, is the duty and the interest of the librarian. Thus he will cultivate successfully an obliging disposition, which is a prime requisite to his success with the public and his usefulness as a librarian.
It ought not to be requisite to insist upon good health as a condition precedent for any one aspiring to be a librarian. So very much depends upon this, that it should form a part of the conscientious duty of every one to acquire and maintain a sound condition of physical health, as a most important adjunct of a thoroughly sound and healthy condition of the mind. This is easier than most persons are aware. If we except inherited const.i.tutional weaknesses, or maladies of a serious character, there is almost no one who is not able by proper diet, regimen, and daily exercise, to maintain a degree of health which will enable him to use his brain to its full working capacity. It demands an intelligent and watchful care of the daily regimen, so that only simple and wholesome food and drink may be taken into the system, and what is equally important, adequate sleep, and habitual moderate exercise. No one can maintain perfect health without breathing good unadulterated air, and exercising in it with great frequency. One"s walks to and from the library may be sufficient to give this, and it is well to have the motive of such a walk, since exercise taken for the mere purpose of it is of far less value. The habit of taking drugs, or going to a doctor for every little malady, is most pernicious. Every one, and especially a librarian, who is supposed (however erroneously) to know everything, should know more of his own const.i.tution than any physician. With a few judicious experiments in daily regimen, and a little abstinence now and then, he can subdue head-aches, catarrhs and digestive troubles, and by exercising an intelligent will, can generally prevent their recurrence. If one finds himself in the morning in a state of languor and la.s.situde, be sure he has abused some physical function, and apply a remedy. An invalid will make a poorly equipped librarian. How can a dyspeptic who dwells in the darkness of a disease, be a guiding light to the mult.i.tudes who beset him every hour? There are few callings demanding as much mental and physical soundness and alertness as the care of a public library.
Sound common sense is as essential to the librarian as sound health. He should always take the practical straightforward view of every item of library business and management, remembering that the straight road is always the shortest way between two points. While he may be full of ideas, he should be neither an idealist nor a dreamer. In library methods, the cardinal requisites to be aimed at, are utility and convenience. A person of the most perfect education, and the highest literary attainments, but dest.i.tute of common sense, will not succeed in the conduct of a library. That intuitive judgment, which sees the reason of everything at a glance, and applies the proper agencies to the case in hand, is wanting in his composition. Mult.i.tudes of emergencies arise in library service, where the prompt and practical sense of the librarian is required to settle a dispute, adjust a difficulty, or to direct what is to be done in some arrangement or re-arrangement of books, or some library appliance or repair. In such cases, the unpractical or impracticable man will be very likely to decide wrongly, choosing the inconvenient method instead of the convenient, the more costly instead of the more economical, the laborious in place of the obvious and easy; in short, some way of doing the work or settling the difficulty which will not permit it to stay settled, or will require the work to be done over again. The man of common-sense methods, on the other hand, will at once see the end from the beginning, antic.i.p.ate every difficulty, and decide upon the proper course without trouble or hesitation, finding his judgment fully vindicated by the result.
The librarian in whom the quality of common sense is well developed will be ever ready to devise or to accept improvements in library methods.
Never a slave to "red tape," he will promptly cut it wherever and whenever it stands in the way of the readiest service of books and information to all comers.
Another quality which every librarian or a.s.sistant in a library should possess is a thorough love of his work. He should cherish a n.o.ble enthusiasm for the success and usefulness of the inst.i.tution with which he has chosen to be a.s.sociated. Nor should this spirit be by any means limited to the literary and scientific aid which he is enabled to extend to others, nor to the acquisition of the knowledge requisite to meet the endless inquiries that are made of him. He should take as much interest in restoring a broken binding, or in seeing that a torn leaf is repaired, as in informing a great scholar what the library contains upon any subject.
No one who is listless or indifferent in the discharge of daily duties is fit for a place in a public library. There should be an _esprit de corps_, a zeal for his profession, which will lead him to make almost any sacrifice of outside interests to become proficient in it. Thus only will he render himself indispensable in his place, and do the greatest amount of service to the greatest number of readers. I have seen employees in libraries so utterly careless of what belongs to their vocation, as to let books, totally unfit for use, ragged or broken, or with plates loosened, ready to drop out and disappear, go back to the shelves unrepaired, to pursue the downward road toward destruction. And I have been in many libraries in which the books upon the shelves exhibited such utter want of care, such disarrangement, such tumbling about and upside-down chaos, and such want of cleanliness, as fairly to make one"s heart ache. In some cases this may have been due in great part to unwise free admission of the public to the shelves, and consequent inevitable disorder; in others, it may be partially excused by the librarian"s absolute want of the needful help or time, to keep the library in order; but in others, it was too apparent that the librarian in charge took no interest in the condition of the books. Too many librarians (at least of the past, however it may now be) have been of the cla.s.s described by Dr.
Poole, the Chicago librarian. He said that library trustees too often appeared to think that anybody almost would do for a librarian; men who have failed in everything else, broken-down clergymen, or unsuccessful teachers, and the like.
Pa.s.sing now to other needful qualifications of librarians and library a.s.sistants, let me say that one of the foremost is accuracy. Perhaps I have before this remarked that exact accuracy is one of the rarest of human qualities. Even an approximation to it is rare, and absolute accuracy is still rarer. Beware of the person who is sure of every thing--who retails to you a conversation he has heard, affecting to give the exact words of a third person, or who quotes pa.s.sages in verse or in prose, with glib a.s.surance, as the production of some well-known writer.
The chances are ten to one that the conversation is mainly manufactured in the brain of the narrator, and that the quotation is either not written by the author to whom it is attributed, or else is a travesty of his real language. It is Lord Byron who tells of that numerous cla.s.s of sciolists whom one finds everywhere--
"With just enough of learning to misquote."
The books one reads abound in erroneous dates, mistaken names, garbled extracts, and blundering quotations. So much the more important is it to the librarian, who is so continually drawn upon for correct information upon every subject, to make sure of his facts, before communicating them.
When (as frequently happens) he has no way of verifying them, he should report them, not as his own conclusions, but on the authority of the book or periodical where found. This will relieve him of all responsibility, if they turn out to be erroneous. Whenever I find a wrong date or name in a printed book, or an erroneous reference in the index, or a mis-spelled word, I always pencil the correct date, or name, or page of reference in the margin. This I do as a matter of instinct, as well as of duty, for the benefit of future inquirers, so that they may not be misled. I speak here of errors which are palpable, or of the inaccuracy of which I have positive knowledge; if in doubt, I either let the matter go entirely, or write a query in pencil at the place, with the presumed correct subst.i.tute appended.
Never be too sure of what you find in books; but prove all things and hold fast to those only which you find to be beyond dispute. Thus will you save yourself from falling into many errors, and from recanting many opinions. It is the method of ordinary education to take everything for granted; it is the method of science to take nothing for granted.
I may refer here to another rule always to be observed, and pertaining to the theme of strict accuracy in your daily work. That is, the necessity of carefully examining every piece of work you may have done, before it leaves your hands, for the purpose of correcting errors. All of us are not only liable to make mistakes, but all of us do make them; and if any one has a conceit of his own accuracy, the surest way to take it out of him is to let him serve an apprenticeship in some library, where there is competent revision of all the labor performed. There are mult.i.tudes of a.s.sistants in libraries who cannot write a letter, even, without making one or more errors. How often do you leave out a word in your writing experience, which may change the meaning of a whole sentence? So, in writing t.i.tles, whether for the catalogue, or for a library order, or for the information of some inquirer, you are liable to make errors of date, or edition, or place of publication, or size, or to misplace or omit or subst.i.tute some word in the description of the book. There is nothing in the world quite so easy as to be mistaken: and the only remedy (and it is an all-essential one) is to go over every line and every word of what you have written, before it leaves your hands. As second thoughts are proverbially best, so a second careful glance over a piece of writing will almost always reveal some error or omission to be corrected. Think of the mortification you must feel at finding an unverified piece of work returned upon your hands, with several glaring mistakes marked by the reviser! Think, on the other hand, of the inward satisfaction experienced when you have done your best, written and revised your own work, and found it always pa.s.sed as perfect. I have tried many persons by many tests, and while I have found a great number who were industrious, intelligent, zealous, conscientious, good-tempered, and expeditious, I have found scarcely one who was always accurate. One of the rarest things in a library is to find an a.s.sistant who has an unerring sense of the French accents. This knowledge, to one expert in that language, even if he does not speak it, should be as intuitive as the art of spelling correctly, either in English or French. He should write the proper accent over a letter just as infallibly as he writes the proper letters in a word. But, strange to say, it is very common, even with good French scholars (in the book-sense or literary sense of scholarship) to find them putting the acute accent for the grave over a vowel, or the grave instead of the acute, or omitting the circ.u.mflex accent entirely, and so on.
Every one commits errors, but the wise man is he who learns by his mistakes, and applies the remedy. The best remedy (as I said in the case of memory in another chapter,) is to cultivate a habit of trained attention in whatever we do. Yet many people (and I am afraid we must say most people) go on through life, making the same blunders, and repeating them. It appears as if the habit of inaccuracy were innate in the human race, and only to be reformed by the utmost painstaking, and even with the aid of that, only by a few. I have had to observe and correct such numberless errors in the work of well-educated, adult, and otherwise accomplished persons, as filled me with despair. Yet there is no more doubt of the improvability of the average mind, however inaccurate at the start, than of the power of the will to correct other bad habits into which people unconsciously fall.