My progress, however, was very slow partly owing to ill-health, but more, I must acknowledge, to carelessness and inattention.

In fact, during the first four years I was at school, I learnt very little of anything, with the exception of reciting verses, which I seemed to learn without any mental effort.

My memory became very retentive.

I found that by attentively reading half a page of print, or more, from any of the school-books, I could repeat the whole of it without missing a word.

I can scarcely explain how I did it; but I think it was by paying strict attention to the words as words, and forming a mental picture of the paragraphs as they were grouped in the book.