Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 03.djvu/355

 5. for Q u below the index, as I have formerly done. When I meet with any thing, that I think fit to put into my common-place-book, I first find a proper head. Suppose, for example, that the head be, I look unto the index for the first letter and the following vowel, which in this instance are E i, if in the space marked E i there is any number that directs me to the page designed for words that begin with an E, and whose first vowel, after the initial letter, is I; I must then write under the word Epistola, in that page, what I have to remark. I write the head in large letters, and begin a little way out into the margin, and I continue on the line, in writing what I have to say. I observe constantly this rule, that only the head appears in the margin, and that it be continued on, without ever doubling the line in the margin, by which means the heads will be obvious at first sight.

If I find no number in the index, in the space E i, I look into my book for the first backside of a leaf that is not written in, which, in a book where there is yet nothing but the index, must be p. 2. I write then, in my index after E i, the number 2, and the head Epistola at the top of the margin of the second page, and all that I put under that head, in the same page, as you see I have done in the second page of this method. From that time the class E i is wholly in possession of the second and third pages.

They are to be employed only on words that begin with an E, and whose nearest vowel is an I, as Ebionita (see the third page) Episcopus, Echinus, Edictum, Efficacia, &c. The reason why I begin always at the top of the backside of a leaf, and assign to one class two pages, that face one another, rather than an entire leaf, is, because the heads of the class appear all at once, without the trouble of turning over a leaf.

Every time that I would write a new head, I VOL. III.