Page:Red Rugs of Tarsus.djvu/37

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as it is called in Turkish). This appeals deeply, because Orientals see and think and speak in figures. They are poets.

I had a whole week of lectures on figures, and now the boys are learning the way to make and recognize the different ones. This has been done entirely without a text-book. I found early in the game that the boys could memorize rapidly. Put this with the fact that they think excellence in scholarship consists in giving you back again what you said. I reversed the old-fashioned way of clearing the decks for action by lining up a lot of stupid and meaningless definitions. Absorb information first, I say; handle it, get acquainted with it, digest it then, with a background of experience, classify your ideas and concentrate them into definitions.

Later

You lost the chance of your lifetime, Mother. I broke off suddenly the learned lecture on rhetoric. Henri Imer and Herbert were com