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The game he had amused himself with so long—the game of trying to remember pictures and people and places clearly and in detail—had been a wonderful training.
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“The game he had amused himself with so long—the game of trying to remember pictures and people and places clearly and in detail—had been a wonderful training.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Source
The Lost Prince
Date
1915
Local voice
Narrator voice · Narrator
Meaning

Meaning of “The game he had amused himself with so…”

A game repeatedly practiced for pleasure becomes useful preparation, showing skill growing out of accumulated attention rather than appearing only when the stakes become serious.

Source context

Where does it come from?

The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. The narration refers to Marco’s long-running memory game, which later becomes useful inside the novel’s fictional secret mission.

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Speaker context

Why the local voice matters

Narrator description of Marco’s long-running memory game.

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ConsistencyDiscipline Quotes About Habits, Practice & ConsistencyGrowthGrowth MindsetHabitsInspirational Quotes About Hope, Courage & PossibilityLearning Quotes About Curiosity, Study & ExperienceLifeLife AdviceLife LessonsMindsetMotivation For LifeMotivational Quotes for Action, Effort & PersistenceProductivitySelf ImprovementExperienceFocus
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Source identified
To make each one many times was the best way to imbed it in his memory.
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“To make each one many times was the best way to imbed it in his memory.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett · The Lost Prince · 1915
Voice: Narrator voice · Narrator
Meaning & context

The narration connects repeated practice with stronger recall, showing Marco deliberately using repetition to make a learned association more durable.

Source details

The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. The exercise involves repeatedly sketching faces connected with places for the novel’s secret mission.

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Source identified
It is well to observe everything and to train one's self to remember faces and circumstances.
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“It is well to observe everything and to train one's self to remember faces and circumstances.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett · The Lost Prince · 1915
Voice: Fictional character · Loristan
Meaning & context

Observation and memory are presented as trainable abilities strengthened by deliberate attention rather than fixed talents that either appear or do not.

Source details

The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. Loristan is training Marco for a fictional diplomatic and political mission, so the advice belongs to that narrative setting.

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Source identified
Another part was The Rat's training of his memory, and bringing home his proofs of advance at night when he returned from his walk.
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“Another part was The Rat's training of his memory, and bringing home his proofs of advance at night when he returned from his walk.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett · The Lost Prince · 1915
Voice: Narrator voice · Narrator
Meaning & context

The Rat tracks improvement through repeated memory exercises and concrete evidence of progress, making development something practiced and demonstrated over time.

Source details

The Lost Prince, Chapter XVIII, “Cities and Faces,” Project Gutenberg #384. The narrator describes “Another part” of the boys’ secret-game preparation as The Rat training his memory and bringing home nightly proofs by describing, reciting or roughly sketching what he had observed. It remains fictional training narrative, not an experimentally established memory-training prescription.

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Source identified
The more you draw, the better. Draw everything you can.
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“The more you draw, the better. Draw everything you can.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett · The Lost Prince · 1915
Voice: Fictional character · Loristan
Meaning & context

Repeated drawing is treated as the route to improvement, making practice and quantity of attempts part of developing a useful skill.

Source details

The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. Loristan encourages Marco to strengthen a sketching ability useful to the story’s secret mission.

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Source identified
The worth of work with the hands
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“The worth of work with the hands”

Booker T. Washington · Working With the Hands · 1904
Meaning & context

Washington opens the book by treating manual work as capable of contributing to education, dignity and practical development rather than merely supplying labor.

Source details

Working With the Hands, Chapter I, opening sentence; Project Gutenberg #64504. This deliberately short excerpt is presented with its educational context.

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Source identified
My subject was mental efficiency as a means to self-development.
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“My subject was mental efficiency as a means to self-development.”

Arnold Bennett · Mental Efficiency, and Other Hints to Men and Women · 1911
Meaning & context

Efficiency is presented as instrumental rather than an end in itself: better use of attention and thought is valuable insofar as it supports deliberate personal development.

Source details

Mental Efficiency. Bennett explicitly defines the scope of his argument as mental efficiency serving self-development; this is period conduct-of-life writing rather than modern cognitive-science evidence.

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