But my teacher told me that my mind had
need of just that exact sort of discipline, and I think she was
right.
A habit of indiscriminate, unsystematized reading, such as I had
fallen into, is entirely foreign to the scholarly habit of mind.
Attention is the secret of real acquirement; but it was months
before I could command my own attention, even when I was
interested in the subject I was examining. It seemed as if all
the pages of all the books I had ever read were turning
themselves over between me and this one page that I wanted to
understand. I found that mere reading does not by any means make
a student.
It was more to me to come into communication with my wise teacher
as a friend than even to receive the wisdom she had to impart.
She was dignified and reticent, but beneath her reserve, as is
often the case, was a sealed fountain of sympathy, which one who
had the key could easily unlock. Thinking of her nobleness of
character, her piety, her learning, her power, and her sweetness,
it seems to me as if I had once had a Christian Zenobia or
Hypatia for my teacher.
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