Brief Longhand; A System of Longhand Contractions by Means of Which the Principal Advantages of Shorthand Are Secured Without Resort to Stenographic Characters, and with Perfect Legibility (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857 Excerpt: ...gluttony every wise man should repress. It is an evil which grows with indulgence, and often terminates in inducing a total misconception of the true design of mental culture. (g) The methodization of one's reading is a point to which all should attend who are desirous of eliciting the fullest use from books. In ancient and modern times we find men who never opened an author without pen in hand, to be ready to note down any particular fact, or turn of expression, which seemed to them worthy of preservation (A) Southey, whose literary attainments were equal to those of any man of his day, kept a commonplace-book in which he made extracts from whatever book he perused. The elder Pliny never traveled without conveniences for making memoranda from the books' he always carried with him; and Brutus, the night before the battle of Pharsalia, which was to decide his earthly destiny forever, was found in his tent reading some favorite author, and making notes, (i) These instances, which might be extended to embrace some of the choicest names in biography, prove the use and necessity there is for something more than the mere cursory reading of hooks, and the need there is for maintaining a record of our literary journeyings. Such a narrative, to an attentive student, would indeed form a diary of the pleasantest and most profitable kind, and one which, if thoughtfully and carefully compiled, could be referred to in future years with the utmost delight, as a refresher to the memory, and a testimony to the extent of his intellectual progression. (;') He will see how his taste has improved in the course of years; he will wonder, on referring to some work, at what he had noted, and what, were he reading it again, he would not now note; and he will find proof, in a thousan...