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CHAPTER I.
PRINCIPLES OF MINEMONICS.
MEMORY may be termed the diary of the mind; and truth compels me to add that, generally, the faculty is treated in much the same manner as are those stiffly bound, carefully-ruled annuals that deluge the world in January. As a rule the entries in these diaries are hurriedly scribbled in pencil, easily read and understood at the time of writing; but when required to be afterwards referred to are found to be blurred and unintelligible. It is true that some make their entries elaborately and carefully, converting the diary into a tasteful specimen book of beautiful penmanship—but that is all. So with our mental diary—we hurriedly and carelessly imprint our best thoughts Memory's tablet, trusting it to preserve them intact, inevitably to be disappointed; and, on the other hand, we just as frequently take the greatest pains in burdening it with things of little or no value. Those who are neither careless nor inattentive in matters memorial, are, as a rule, compelled by the hurry and scurry of a busy life to rely to a great extent on what is proverbially a wayward and treacherous faculty, and are thus perpetually learning only to forget. The man who possesses a good healthy memory is so scarce as to be almost a phenomenon, and when found is regarded as one specially gifted.
In a little work[1] published a few years since, Dr. Mortimer Granville very appositely compared memory to a phonograph—once in action it receives every impression conveyed to it; though the record may be dormant yet it is
- ↑ The Secret of a good Memory. London: Bogue.
