The collateral advantages also of this exercise, are both valuable and extensive. The operation of the principle which supposes double duty by the mind, enters into the nature of numerous acts in ordinary life, besides that of thinking and speaking, and which a perfect command of the thoughts in paraphrasing will tend greatly to facilitate.--For example, it will greatly assist the pupil in making observations during conversation, in attending to the weak and strong points of an argument, and in preparing his materials for a reply, while he is all the time hearing and storing up the ideas of a speaker.--It will enable him more extensively, and more deliberately to employ his mind on useful subjects while engaged with his work, even in those cases where a considerable degree of thought is required;--and it will greatly aid him in acquiring the art of "a ready writer," and will be available, both when he himself writes his own thoughts, or when he requires to dictate them to others. Many persons who can express their ideas well enough by speech, find themselves greatly at a loss when they sit down to write them;--and this arises entirely from the want of that command of the mind which is necessary whenever it is called on to do double duty. The person cannot think of that which he wishes to write, and at the same moment guide the hand in writing; in the same way, and for the same reason, that a child cannot answer a question and yet continue his play. By the use of the paraphrastic exercise, however, the pupil will soon be enabled not only to concoct in his own mind what he intends to write, during the time he is writing; but the faculty may, by the same means, be cultivated to such an extent, that he may at last be able to dictate to two clerks at a time, and sometimes perhaps, (as it has been affirmed some have done) even to three.