translation of figures into words, as well as of words into figures, before going farther. This exercise is very important. (See p. 21).
HOW TO REMEMBER A LONG SERIES OF FIGURES.
The natural arrangement of figures is in groups of threes, and this arrangement greatly assists in committing them to memory. Let us take a list of sixty figures, as follows, and see if we cannot recollect them all consecutively, in a very short time:—
156876243832396519674942407684647397612309986750949781580236.
As they now stand, it seems a most formidable undertaking to attempt to commit this long array of figures to memory; but by the application of our system, the task becomes mere child's play; and would be so even if the list were twice as long.
First, arrange the figures into groups of three figures each, of which you will thus have twenty. Apply your memory-pegs to each group in its order. Then translate the figures into letters, and of these letters form the most appropriate words you can for picture-making. (Page 33.) Tack them on to your pegs, and you have got the whole series by heart, without the possibility of mistake.
To be more explicit: your first group, 156, can be translated into low fop, which you can easily tack on to your memory-peg law. Your second group, 876, can be rendered into shut up, and be aptly associated with Noah, and so on with the
