Uncollected Pieces for Young Readers
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[Getting Things Done.]
Sarah Orne Jewett
This is a busy and distracting world! One is so apt to forget things and it is very trying to have no excuse but forgetfulness. Here is a little prescription for young memories -- well-meaning memories that wish to keep the smaller duties of life well in mind. Let us call the patient John (there are a good many Johns in America just growing up and troubled about many things).
John has an aunt beside his father and mother, to remind him of his work and he goes to school and has his lessons to think of beside his engagements with the other boys. These are most apt to be remembered, but he really means to do the things he ought to do. One night he goes to bed quite sorrowful in his mind. His mother had asked him to get some buttons in the village at the store next but one to the schoolhouse, so that she could finish his new striped shirts. John forgot them; he wanted his new shirts too.
His father told him to speak for Mr. Chase's red horse for the next two days to help in the farm work.
John forgot that, and the red horse was promised to somebody else and he forgot the kindling-wood which he usually brought before he went away in the morning, he forgot to mend the hencoop where he had seen a slat loosened, and the chickens got out and travelled through the flower-garden. Nobody else had seen the slat and it was his affair; he really did mean to remember to take the hammer and a nail or two when he went through the yard again.
Yes, and his aunt asked him to look out some words in the big dictionary at school -- at last poor John got discouraged and wondered what he had better do to restore his failing wits. Dear me! how he tosses about on the bed, and tries to think what he must do to-morrow. This is a bad case indeed. Let us whisper the prescription into his ear -- "Make a little list, Johnny, take your pencil and a bit of paper and set down the errands and everything else that you want to remember."
The patient takes heart and here is his record with a blank space at the bottom for last additions in the morning:
Pick some peas for mother.
Mend the gate-latch.
Look out those words.
Get my shirt-buttons.
Tell Bill Downs I don't want his old woodchuck.
Make that list of all the birds I know by sight that the teacher wants.
So it went on, and twenty times next day John pulls out the business-like strip of brown paper and consults it with care; by night he has crossed off everything but the woodchuck item, for the reason that he and Bill Downs made up and were friends again after they had worked off their animosity in a good scuffle, and John went home with him after school and was so pleased with the woodchuck's looks that he allowed his offer of its value in pond lilies to stand. John had planted some lily roots in a small pond back of his garden and guarded them with jealous care. The other boys liked to have them to sell in the cars.*
Now this prescription seems at first thought to be quite silly. One might forget also to look at the list, but somehow one doesn't and it is a great pleasure to cross off things when they are fairly done and out of the way. Then there are two other good reasons for keeping a list; first you get into a habit of thinking over what you have to do and arranging your day a little and so growing systematic; secondly, after a while you can keep the list in your own mind by force of habit and need not even write it down. Your memory is trained to serve you as it should -- there is really no reason why we should annoy ourselves and disappoint other people by letting the thought of our duties be indistinct and unreliable.
Notes
This article first appeared without a title in "The Contributors and the Children" column in Wide Awake 24: 2 (January 1887): 150-1.
cars: On the train.
Edited and annotated by Terry Heller, Coe College
Uncollected Pieces for Young Readers
Main Contents and Search