THE STUDENT REMEMBERS THROUGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE

I was sitting on my front porch one day when a couple of the neighbor boys walked up the path. Something was on their minds, and it didn't take them long to tell me about it. Their teacher had told them to learn the thirteen original states of the Union as their history assignment for the day, and one look at that formidable list had them down. Neither of them, they admitted candidly, was a star pupil as it was, and—well, they wanted to go fishing. If they could only find a way of memorizing those states quickly. . . . They beat around the bush, like Tom Sawyer, for a while, and then one of them came to the point.