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we observe in the common forms of insanity. Experience, moreover, shows that the resolution and effort which the mastery of these systems implies would render them superfluous, except so far as every man frames an artificial memory for himself, suited to his own turn of mind. The true art of cultivating the memory may be condensed into five rules. 1. The association or connection of ideas. To retain facts permanently, we should gain them in such order that each shall be a nucleus or basis for more in an endless series. The highest kind of memory is the philosophic, which associates facts and truths with universal principles. 2. The habit of close attention, which depends largely upon the degree of interest we feel in what is to be remembered. The want of memory of which so many complain is like Falstaff's deafness: "Rather out, please you. It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal." Almost every person recollects what keenly interests him. The "dull" boy, who cannot remember a line of his arithmetic or grammar lesson, is the very one who never forgets a face, a bird's nest, or a foot-path. Why is it that the sportsman, who forgets the facts of history or science, can recall so readily and accurately the names and pedigree of all the winners in the great races? It is simply because he has been strongly interested in the latter class of facts, but not in the former. When the ghost says to Hamlet: "Remember me!" he replies: "Yes, as long as memory holds a place in this distracted globe." The scene he had witnessed made so intense an impression that it formed from that time a part of his moral being, separable from it only by his dissolution. In strong minds the habit of attention is not a mere aptness to receive

an impression; it is a strenuous effort. They seize facts as a hungry lion seizes his prey. Emerson remarks that there are some things which everybody remembers. A creditor is in little danger of forgetting his debtor, and men generally keep an insult fresh. Ben Jonson used to say that it was hard to forget the last kick. In Scotland it was customary in the olden time to maintain boundary lines by whipping a boy on the site. The feverish, hurried life which most persons live to-day, and the nervous exhaustion consequent upon over-stimulus and prolonged fatigue, are fatal to vivid remembrance. Men whose minds are continually flitting from one thing to another, dwelling upon nothing long, must necessarily receive but transitory impressions. 3. A clear apprehension of what is to be remembered. 4. A strong determination to remember. Though memory depends largely upon insight and mental activity, yet there is no doubt that a man can remember in a great degree, as Johnson said a man could compose,- by dogged determination. Euler, the mathematician, being almost totally blind, was obliged to make and to retain in his head the calculations and formula which others preserve in books. The result was that the extent, readiness and accuracy of his mathematical memory became prodigious, and D'Alembert declared it to be barely credible to those who had seen its feats. No other faculty of the mind is so rapidly strengthened by exercise as memory. When Edward Everett began preaching, he learned by heart only one page of his sermon at a time; when he quit preaching, he could learn the entire sermon by reading it over twice. "A very common reason," says a writer, why men do not remember, is that they do not try;

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ever-present desire to prevail is the chief element of all success. Nothing but the fairy's wand can realize the capricious desire of the moment, but as to the objects of laudable wishes, deeply breathed and for many a night and day ever present to the mind, these are placed by Providence more within our reach than is commonly believed. When a person says, If I could only have my wish I would excel in such an art or science, we may generally answer: The truth is, you have no such wish; all you covet is the empty applause, not the substantial accomplishment." 5. Method. In studying a subject, we shall fix our acquisitions most securely in the mind by mastering its parts in a natural and orderly sequence, from the easier to the most difficult. Study of this kind has been compared to a well-built stair-case, by which you can climb to a great height with a minimum of fatigue, lifting the body only a few inches at a time. In a philosophic memory, the various parts of a subject, like the stones in an arch, will often keep one another in place.

Among the best rules ever laid down for the cultivation of the memory are those of Thomas Fuller, some of whose feats we have mentioned: "First, soundly infix in thy mind what thou desirest to remember. What wonder is it if agitation of business jog that out of thy head which was there rather tacked than fastened? It is best knocking in the nail overnight, and clinching it the next morning. Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a servant a slave. Remember Atlas was weary. Have as much reason as a camel, to rise when thou hast thy full load. Memory, like a purse, if it be overfull that it cannot shut, all will drop out of it: take heed of a gluttonous curiosity

to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the appetite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof. Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in bundles than when it lies untoward flapping and hanging about his shoulders, Things orderly fardled up under heads are most portable."

Finally, the retentiveness of the memory depends largely upon the bodily condition. The impressions made upon the mental tablet are like those made upon the photographer's plate. If the chemicals, solutions, etc., are good and properly applied, and the plate is in a condition to receive the impressions, there will be a good picture; otherwise it will be dull, brown, and indistinct. So with a man who is sickly and debilitated, and whose brain is consequently weak; the pictures made upon his mind will partake of its weakness and obscurity. The memory is therefore one of the most delicate tests of disease or natural decay in the brain. When a man constantly forgets his appointments; mislays his books and papers; is oblivious of the names of his dearest friends; forgets at any interruption to finish a task which he has begun, and finds that he cannot hold in his mental gripe for a few consecutive minutes the name of the month or the day of the week, - and especially when, along with this, he feels an occasional numbness in a finger, and drops his cane unconsciously in walking, he has reason, according to medical authority, to fear that a softening of the brain, or some form of cerebral disorganization, has begun, and he cannot too quickly apply the remedy.

FOOLS.

"Be tolerant to fools."-MARCUS AURELIUS.

WHY is it that fools are laughed at, even by kind

hearted men? Is not the lack of brains a misfor

tune to be pitied rather than sneered at by those who are better endowed? Is intellectual deficiency or deformity less entitled to our commiseration than physical? Pascal has answered these questions in his usual acute way. "Whence is it," he asks, "that a lame man does not offend us, while the crippled in mind does offend us? It is because the lame man acknowledges that we walk straight; whereas the crippled in mind maintain that it is we who go lame. But for this, we should feel more compassion

for them than resentment." The same profound thinker tells us, however, in another place, that man is necessarily so much of a fool that it would be a species of folly not to be a fool,- a comforting theory to the stupid, for if wisdom is attainable only through foolishness, who is more to be congratulated than he who has scaled the dizziest peaks of folly, the fool par excellence?

Whatever may be the reason, we confess we have a kindly feeling for fools. Like Charles Lamb, we love to discover a streak of folly in a man; we venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man commits in your company, the more tests he gives you that he is not sly, snaky, and hypocritical,- that he

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