CONTINGENCIES IN REPORTING.
Learn to write anywhere—on a table, on a desk, on your knee. The reporter is at times called upon to write with poor ink, or with a hard lead pencil on bad paper. He may be required to take notes in total darkness, standing or seated in a moving vehicle, in a crowd, on any kind of paper, with and without lines. He must become accustomed to these contingencies, and take them as a matter of course. His shorthand must be so well mastered that the means of applying it anywhere, under all circumstances, must be a secondary consideration. We heard of a recent important case where a large part of the most convincing and important evidence was taken by a reporter behind a curtain in the dark. Learn to write shorthand with ease and facility under disadvantageous circumstances and be sure to read what you have written.
GETTING UP SPEED.
Mr. F. H. Hemperley, of Philadelphia, the editor of the "Stenographer," wrote some time ago: "The best way to learn to report in shorthand is to begin to report at the beginning—that is, to write from dictation from the first lesson. It is like learning to walk: stand up and take one step, then another, until you get the needed strength and grace." Assuming, as the late Mr. Fred Pitman wrote, that the pupil possesses "accuracy of form; a good smooth method
