Excerpt from Picture Logic: An Attempt to Popularise the Science of Reasoning by the Combination of Humorous Pictures With Examples of Reasoning Taken From Daily Life

As to refer me to his own university career, a subject which he quickly dropped, remembering how often he had told me stories of his undergraduate days before I was sent to col lege. The result was that I was ordered to select a tutor for two months in the Long Vacation and pass my modera tions in the following term, or for ever be condemned to the backless slippery heights of office stools. The awful thought of wasting my sweetness and withering in such a dry and uncongenial soil nerved me for a desperate effort. Of a restless and excitable disposition I was for some time after haunted by dreams of men with pens in their ears, and ledgers with columns of figures to add, so lofty that their bases were on the earth while their summits were lost in the clouds. I never could do mathematics - not that 1 was quick at any work - even my mother allowed this, for she wrote to my tutor for matriculation to the effect that our dear Douglas had manifested symptoms of future greatness, when a child, and still possessed remarkable ability, if it could only be drawn out; but alas! There was a want of application, especially in his mathematics.' I therefore determined to take up Logic as a substitute for Mathematics, and wrote to inform my tutor that I should only want help in this subject. He selected a charming spot on the north coast of Devon and we met there. He had one other pupil - a very quiet youth and, as it seemed to me, very clever, my fear of whom was heightened con siderably when I learnt that he had intended to try for a class, but, finding his books in a very imperfect state, was content with passing, though determined not to miss that. The awe with which this piece of information filled me I never succeeded in quite shaking off, though I liked him very much afterwards. He always seemed to me a sort of half-way house between Mr. Practical and myself - the idea of any one knowing more than Mr. Practical was an idea.

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