MEMORY. 669 



The word will then be remembered when the numbers 

 alone might be forgotten. 



"The most common figure-alphabet is this: 



1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0. 



t, n, m, r, 1, sh, g, f, b, s, 



d, j, k, V, p, c, 



ch, c, z, 



"To briefly show its use, suppose it is desired to fix 1142 feet in a 

 second as the velocity of sound : t, t, r, n, are the letters and order 

 required. Fill up with vowels forming a phrase, like ' tight run ' and 

 connect it by some such flight of the imagination as that if a man tried 

 to keep up with the velocity of sound, he would have a tight run. 

 When you recall this a few days later great care must be taken not to 

 get confused with the velocity of light, nor to think he had a hard run 

 which would be 3000 feet too fast." * 



Dr. Pick and others use a system which consists in 

 linking together any two ideas to be remembered by means 

 of an intermediate idea which will be suggested by the 

 first and suggest the second, and so on through the list. 

 Thus, 



' ' Let us suppose that we are to retain the following series of ideas : 

 garden, liair, watchman, philosophy, copper, etc. . . . We can combine 

 the ideas in this manner: garden, plant, hair of plant — hair; hair, 

 bonnet, watchman; — watchman, wake, study, philosophy ; philosophy, 

 chemistry, copper; etc. etc." (Pick.)f 



It is matter of popular knowledge that an impression 

 is remembered the better in proportion as it is 



1) More recent ; 



2) More attended to ; and 



3) More often repeated. 



The effect of recency is all but absolutely constant. Of 

 two events of equal significance the remoter one will be 

 the one more likely to be forgotten. The memories of 

 childhood which persist in old age can hardly be compared 

 with the events of the day or hour which are forgotten, for 

 these latter are trivial once-repeated things, whilst the 



* E. Pick : Memory and its Doctors (1888), p. 7. 



f This system is carried out in great detail in a book called ' Memory 

 Training,' by Wm. L. Evans (1889). 



