Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/49

 factorily accomplished, just as when we were boys we used to set for ourselves physical tasks.

"If you will get the potatoes hoed by three o'clock," mother used to say to us boys, "you can go fishing for the rest of the afternoon."

How quickly conversation and youthful horseplay stopped; the weeds fell before our devastating hoes like the Huns before the marines. We plied our task with a vigor and a persistency that brought it to a glorious finish with time to spare before three o'clock.

It is so that a boy ought to learn to drive his mind, yet few young fellows come to college or go out from high school into life with much idea of mental concentration or much training in it. Their minds have a tendency to jump from one thing to another with the skill of an acrobat. They find it difficult to concentrate their attention on a single subject for fifteen minutes, and, both in high school and college, they are handicapped by this lack of mental control.

The best student I have ever known was so not so much from superior quality or alertness of mind as from his unusual ability to concentrate and hold his attention on what he was doing. He could get more done in an hour than most fellows could accomplish in two. When he settled to his books nothing moved him or diverted his attention. He would sit for an hour never stirring a muscle excepting as he had to turn the pages of the book he was reading. When he was at work he neither spoke