is not merely a
page of print where information may be sought but that it is a mirror in
which one finds the world, its wisdom, its joy, its sorrow, its divine
adventures. Robert Southey, the friend of the poet Coleridge, has
written beautifully on the subject in a little poem called "His Books."

Another tool in the student's workshop is _Previously Acquired
Knowledge_: that is, what one has in one's mind. Some people's minds are
junk-shops. But a junk-shop is better than an empty shop. This
previously acquired knowledge, if used rightly, becomes the tool of
later courses, the servant of later years. Our stored-up facts--many of
them--have not been an end in themselves. How could they be? For
example, such things as paradigms and formulae and long lists of names
and dates, are tools pure and simple; but the student in the workshop
must have them or she will be like a carpenter who had much to do but on
coming to his bench found no tools there and so was idle all day.

A fourth tool for the girl in her study--one that cannot be deliberately
acquired, as information or apparatus or even health can be--is
_Experience_. This is the most valuable tool of all--one's experience of
travel, with people, in responsibility, in love, in joy, in sorrow, in
any kind of work. The girls who are the most interesting in the
classroom are the girls who are not contenting themselves with apparatus
alone but whose minds are flexible with experience, who bring all of
themselves, their life, to bear upon the work. A certain well-known
minister had prepared a sermon for his usual Sunday engagement, but
half an hour before service another text came into his mind. He could
not forget it, so he jotted down notes and preached the new sermon
instead of the one that had been prepared. This sermon made a great
impression on all who heard it, and the minister himself said of it that
some people would declare that it had been thought out in half an hour,
but that really he had put fifty years of his life into it. The sharper
and better the tools, the finer the character of the work. If experience
has been observed and retained, and previously acquired knowledge is
ready for service, and hand and mind know how to use books, and the
student is in good condition physically, then the excellence of that
girl's work in the class and out can be guaranteed.

And now what are the uses of the work which these tools can accomplish
for us? Coleridge wrote in h