The Madison Daily Leader

Attention and Memory.

A good memory is so very useful and desirable a thing that persons who profess to teach artificial systems of memorizing easily obtain attention and profitable patronage; but there really is no such thing as an "artificial memory," nor even as an artificially assisted memory. Many people would undoubtedly have better memories than they now have if, in their youth or in their past life, they had understood the simple physiological principles upon which the memory is founded.

The most important part of the memory is the stowing away of things, not the bringing of them forth again: and if people are careful during the period of life which is chiefly occupied in stowing away things to do this work with attention and thoroughness, and if they are able in after life to keep themselves in a fairly good state of health and vigor, they are not likely to be troubled with poor memory.

The first and most important element of memory is the taking of an impression in such a way that it is likely to be retained; the more sharp and vivid this impression is made, the more permanent it is likely to be. Attention in taking in what we wish to learn, then, is the secret of remembering it afterward.

Plenty of people who have very "poor memories," as the term is used, remember certain things with great vividness. Their deficiency is not so much that they cannot remember as that they cannot remember the right things.

"I can recall," said a gentleman not long ago, "the exact outward appearance of my old brown-covered algebra on the day that the teacher took it out of my hand and hit me on the side of the head with it. I can remember that I had cut a triangular piece out of the leather at the lower right-hand corner of the front cover, and that the back cover was loosened half way up; but not one single thing that was between the covers of that book remains with me at this time."

The explanation of this familiar phenomenon undoubtedly lies partly in the fact that the boy was much interested in the circumstances attending the cuffing which he received, and the implement with which it was inflicted, but he was never interested at all in the contents of the algebra.

It was in obedience to this principle that the custom arose in England—a custom continuing down to within the present century—of fixing and preserving a general knowledge of metes and bounds by whipping boys close by them. Whenever a stake or a stone was placed to mark the boundary between towns or estates, and also at more or less regular intervals afterward, several boys were taken to the spot and soundly beaten, their attention being meantime constantly directed to the boundary mark. It was believed that the boy so punished never forgot where the stake or stone was, and his testimony concerning it was always accepted in default of better evidence.

To be thoroughly interested, indeed, is the surest way of implanting facts or words in the memory, and it is always within the power of the young, and of those more advanced in years as well, by paying patient, willing and intelligent attention to what they are reading or studying, to keep its essential features in mind through life.