racy of his principal assertion.
When a lawyer tells him he has nothing to do with these ideas, he is
immediately at a stand in his narrative; he can recollect nothing, he
is sure of nothing; he has no reason to give for his belief, unless he
may say that it was Michaelmas-day when such a thing happened, that he
had a goose for dinner that day, or that he had a new wig. Those who
have more enlarged minds, seldom produce these strange reasons for
remembering facts. Indeed, no one can reason clearly, whose memory has
these foolish habits; the ill matched ideas are inseparably joined,
and hence they imagine there is some natural connection between them.
Hence arise those obstinate prejudices which no arguments can
vanquish.

To prevent children from arguing ill, we must, therefore, take care,
in exercising their memory, to discourage them in this method of
proving that they remember one thing by telling us a number of others
which happened at the same time; rather let them be excited to bring
their reasoning faculty into play in support of their memory. Suppose,
for instance, that a child had mislaid his hat, and was trying to
recollect where he had put it. He first may recollect, from the
association of time, that he had the hat the last time he went out;
but when he wants to recollect when that time was, he had better go
back, if he can, to his motive for going out; this one idea will bring
a number of others in right order into his mind. He went out,
suppose, to fetch his kite, which he was afraid would be wet by a
shower of rain; then the boy recollects that his hat must have been
wet by the same rain, and that when he came in, instead of hanging it
up in its usual place, it was put before the fire to be dried. What
fire, is the next question, &c.

Such an instance as this may appear very trivial; but children whose
minds are well managed about trifles, will retain good habits when
they are to think about matters of consequence. By exercising the
memory in this manner about things, instead of about books and
lessons, we shall not disgust and tire our pupils, nor shall we give
the false notion, that all knowledge is acquired by reading.

Long before children read fluently for their own amusement, they like
to hear others read aloud to them, because they have then the
entertainment without the labour. We may exercise their memory by
asking for an account of what they have heard. But let them never be
required to repe