Page:The Fun of It.pdf/73

Rh the men can eat whale meat three times a day with­out effort. Then they begin to tire of it and eat less and less. For a period they can’t bear the sight of it. Soon their intense hunger forces them to nibble and after this stage their appetite gradually increases. At the end of thirty days they have learned not only to like whalemeat, but they never lose the taste for it.”

I think I myself can eat anything but oatmeal. Some day I shall have to try out the Stefansson method of learning to like it!

There was always plenty of work to be done at Denison House for there were classes and game periods of all kinds for boys and girls. Besides these, English writing and reading were taught to those ambitious mothers and fathers who knew only their native tongue and came to learn a new one.

This instruction, by the way, is very different from ordinary classes where pupils know the lan­guage. Did you ever stop to think how explana­tions could be made if you did not know any of the words the teacher was using? Of course, she would have to pantomime what she was saying. In the beginning, that is exactly what is done in these classes. For instance, to teach “door,” the instruc­tor has to go to a door and point it out. To inter­pret “I open the door,” she must go through the whole motion with the class repeating the words. And so on through the sign language until pupils learn enough to take up the alphabet.