The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being "over by the arbor," or "in the oak parlor," or "up at the stone steps," and say instead that the things were in Stephen, or in the Commonwealth, or in George III.They got the habit without trouble.To have the long road mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for I had the habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time and failure; but now I could name the reign I left them in, and send the children.
Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, and peg them alongside the English ones, so that we could always have contemporaneous French history under our eyes as we went our English rounds.We pegged them down to the Hundred Years' War, then threw the idea aside, I do not now remember why.After that we made the English pegs fence in European and American history as well as English, and that answered very well.English and alien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues, cataclysms, revolutions--we shoveled them all into the English fences according to their dates.Do you understand? We gave Washington's birth to George II.'s pegs and his death to George III.'s; George II.got the Lisbon earthquake and George III.the Declaration of Independence.Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Savonarola, Joan of Arc, the French Revolution, the Edict of Nantes, Clive, Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey, Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga, the Battle of the Boyne, the invention of the logarithms, the microscope, the steam-engine, the telegraph--anything and everything all over the world--we dumped it all in among the English pegs according to it date and regardless of its nationality.
If the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded I should have lodged the kings in the children's heads by means of pictures--that is, I should have tried.It might have failed, for the pictures could only be effective WHEN MADE BY THE PUPIL; not the master, for it is the work put upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and my children were too little to make drawings at that time.And, besides, they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they are like me.
But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able to use it.It will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and one cannot go outside and peg a road.Let us imagine that the kings are a procession, and that they have come out of the Ark and down Ararat for exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road.This will bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will represent the length of a king's reign.
And so on.You will have plenty of space, for by my project you will use the parlor wall.You do not mark on the wall; that would cause trouble.You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks.These will leave no mark.
Take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two inches square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the Conqueror's reign.On each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and term of service.We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and William's begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in the way of a landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw.
By the time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written "William I.--1066-1087--twenty-one years" twenty-one times, those details will be your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything but dynamite.I will make a sample for you to copy:
(Fig.3).
I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking for Harold.It may be that a whale hasn't that fin up there on his back, but I do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best to err on the safe side.He looks better, anyway, than he would without it.
Be very careful and ATTENTIVE while you are drawing your first whale from my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that you will not need to copy the sample any more.
Compare your copy with the sample; examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and can shut your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures, then turn the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from memory; and also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from memory until you have finished the whole twenty-one.This will take you twenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find that you can make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person can make a sardine; also, up to the time you die you will always be able to furnish William's dates to any ignorant person that inquires after them.
You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two inches square, and do William II.(Fig.4.)Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the eye.Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and that would be confusing and a damage.It is quite right to make him small; he was only about a No.11 whale, or along there somewhere; there wasn't room in him for his father's great spirit.The barb of that harpoon ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the whale and ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb were removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock into the whale.It is best to leave the barb the way it is, then every one will know it is a harpoon and attending to business.
Remember--draw from the copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription from memory.
Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the details will stay with you and be hard to forget.
