Had "Prof. Loisette" been a little less arrogant in his pretensions, he would have built on a more enduring foundation, and his continued success would have been assured, while to-day his star is no longer in the ascendant.
In 1886 a pamphlet appeared in England, by F. Appleby, entitled "Loisette's Art of Never Forgetting compared with Mnemonics." Just at this time "Loisette" decided to try his fortune in America, where he hoped to encounter less criticism, and all went well until he reached Washington. Some one has suggested a correlation between Washington and Waterloo. The New York World of June 29th, under the heading "His Former Pupils Rebel," shows what the Washington pupils thought of him, and gave some of his personal history. While the same enterprising sheet on July 26th, under the caption, "Loisette Gives It Up," gave some still more startling facts in his career. A brief but trenchant editorial appeared in The Independent July 5th. Last of all, the staid and conservative Westminster Review (Aug. 1888) enters the list in a comparison of "Loisette" and Pick, with a page and a half devoted to "Loisette" Exposed. No one interested in the "Loisette" system, or the "Loisette"-Fellows controversy, should fail to read this article.
The following clever hit on the Loisette System is worthy of reproduction.
A MEMORY LESSON.
Some of the Beauties of a Scientific Modern System.
(Luke Sharp, in Detroit Free Press.)
I was sitting in my room in the Free Press building the other day, working hard, with my feet on the desk, when the doorway darkened and I looked up. There stood, with a hand on each of the door-posts, a most disreputable-looking specimen of a man. I sized him up instantly as a drunkard, and made up my mind that he wanted to work me for twenty-five cents.
In this I was wrong, and it shows how a person should be slow in coming to an opinion about an unknown fellow-creature. He wanted only ten cents.
"Say, mister," he said, "you don't happen to have ten cents you could spare?"
"You have struck it the first time. I don't."
"Say, mister, I haven't had anything to eat for twenty-four hours."
