Portia. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark The nightingale, if she should sing by day, How many things by season season'd are -Ibid., V, i. Marullus. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome, To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels? You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! And do you now put on your best attire? And do you now strew flowers in his way Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, -Julius Caesar, I, i. Cassius. I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus, As well as I do know your outward favor. I cannot tell what you and other men In awe of such a thing as I myself. -Ibid., I, ii. Cassius. I know where I will wear this dagger then; Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius. Caesar. What say the augurers? —Ibid., I, iii. Servant. They would not have you to stir forth today. Plucking the entrails of an offering forth, They could not find a heart within the beast. Caesar. The gods do this in shame of cowardice; Caesar would be a beast without a heart, If he should stay at home today for fear. No, Caesar shall not: danger knows full well And I the elder and more terrible: And Caesar shall go forth. Ligarius. —Ibid., II, ii. What's to do? Brutus. A piece of work that will make sick men whole. Ligarius. But are not some whole that we must make —Ibid., II, ii. sick? Brutus. Our hearts you see not; they are pitiful; And pity to the general wrong of Rome— As fire drives out fire, so pity pity Hath done this deed on Caesar. -Ibid., III, i. We have taken our first step in reading. What have you learned? What have you gained? Do you think you can ever go back to those loose, careless habits that marked your reading in the past? And, more interesting than anything else, the process we have discovered is after all not artificial but merely a natural process that we have been neglecting. But why, then, if grouping is natural and not mechanical, is there need to call the student's attention to it? Because most of us have become so familiar with type, and so careless in our reading, that we rush on, getting from the text sometimes no meaning, sometimes but part of it, and frequently the wrong meaning. Nothing will do more to correct bad habits of reading than careful grouping. Even though this process seems at first to be mechanical, we soon find that it is not so: it merely emphasizes very strikingly a habit to which we have become so accustomed in our careful reading that we are unconscious of it. At the beginning the grouping process seems to be unnecessarily slow. It is so easy to read a page a minute that it looks like a great waste of time to go slowly, group by group; but there is no other way to master the content of the printed page. An author can give you his thought or picture only through groups, and these groups, long or short, must be gathered together and built up again into the ideas and pictures he had in mind. And in time, so expert does the careful grouper become, that he reads more and more rapidly and gets more from the printed page at a first reading than many untrained readers get in a great many. CHAPTER II GROUP SEQUENCE Read aloud the following sentences: 1. They were talking very merrily about the General and Hugh and their friend Mills. 2. They were talking very merrily about the General and Hugh and their friend Mills, and were discussing some romantic plan for the recapture of their horses. 3. They were talking very merrily about the General and Hugh and their friend Mills, and were discussing some romantic plan for the recapture of their horses from the enemy. 4. They were talking very merrily about the General and Hugh and their friend Mills, and were discussing some romantic plan for the recapture of their horses from the enemy, when they came out of the path into a road. 5. They were talking very merrily about the General and Hugh and their friend Mills, and were discussing some romantic plan for the recapture of their horses from the enemy, when they came out of the path into a road, and found themselves within twenty yards of a group of Federal soldiers. 6. They were talking very merrily about the General and Hugh and their friend Mills, and were discussing some romantic plan for the recapture of their horses from the enemy, when they came out of the path into a road, and found themselves within twenty yards of a group of Federal soldiers, quietly sitting on their horses. 7. They were talking very merrily about the General and Hugh and their friend Mills, and were discussing some romantic plan for the recapture of their horses from the enemy, when they came out of the path into a road, and found themselves within twenty yards of a group of Federal soldiers, quietly sitting on their horses, evidently guarding the road. You observe, sentence 1 presents a complete idea, but in every succeeding sentence something is added, something of great importance, without which we should not get the full meaning. Each sentence standing alone makes complete sense, and yet sentence 1 when repeated in 2 is not complete without the added idea of 2. The same principle applies in 3, where two ideas are added to the first sentence, and one to the second; and so on to the end. Hence, in reading the last sentence the mind keeps looking on from group to group, until the entire story is finished. In other words, our minds continually reach forward for the complete thought-for what the author wanted us to see. Briefly, he saw some people who, while talking and discussing a plan, came to a road and found themselves near soldiers, sitting on their horses, guarding the road. You have not found this illustration difficult to understand; but you have learned from it an important principle: Group Sequence. Long years of careless reading have resulted in what we may call mental laziness. We read along (we are speaking now of silent reading), getting an idea here and an idea there, but making no conscious effort |