i6 
LAND & WATER 
June 14, 1917 
Memory 
By J. G. Squire 
Mi:N. in privacy, do all sorts of trivial actions tfiat 
tluv never mention to each other, and do not 
leaiise that fitter people also do. I'or example, 
men tind tliwnselves. at times, in the bath with 
the unly visible soap at tl-.c other end of the rq; m : they arc 
annoyed, but it is an annoyance which they for-^ei when tlicy 
dress and do not mention afterwards. Until I wrote the 
other day about ..Jhe J\oyal Academy, 1 had never 
mentioned to anyortt-Hihe' fact that I 'was accustomed 
. to remember the order of Down Street and Dover Street 
by recalling that Down St.cet is farther Down and that 
Dover Street is nearer Dover which is east of London. 
There iire other things that I remembtr in the sam^ 
way. From earliest youth I have distinguished the j-osition 
of the port and stiu^board light.-,, by reflecting that 
'' port " wine is " red," and that if you take too much of it 
vou will not be " right," but will probably get " left." A 
inuinent's thought would Lave made one feel certain tliat 
other people must, in those fantastic places ,that they call 
-their minds, go through the same absurd performances. 
But as a fact, this had never occurred to me. ' And now a 
correspondent, who read my article, writes to say tb.at systems 
for training the memory arc usually based upon this :^ort of 
thing, and sends me a book to prove it. The book is called 
J.oiseile. It was copyrighted in i8g',) ; its author was Prof. 
A. I.oisette. an American gentleman of Bismarcluan appear- 
ance ; its jmblishcrs are Funk and VVagnalls ; its title is 
Assimilalirc Memory or How to Attend and Never ror«ct, 
and its price is half-a-crown. That is cheap i<yi a system of 
Memory Training. 
* j> * * * 
This \-o6k teaches you to rememl^ur anything. You grasp 
tlie three main laws of Memory — the law of Inclusion (ovei- 
l:ii)ping of meaning, idea or sound), F.xc'usion (antithesis) 
and Concunencc (sequence or co-e.vistence of impressions 
or ideas that have been either accidentally or causally to- 
gether), and with their help you commit to mumory. and 
retain witliout elfort, any fact or series of facts you are likely 
to come across. You can get hold of the order of the American 
Presidents by a most ingenious series of assonances and 
associations — (for example, a James followed a John, James 
and John being the sons of Zebedee) : \i>ii 'an remember 
foreig}!, words— (for example, heai ! heart -sick 
. . . fainting . . . cordial . . . vor) and you 
can, by a simple plan, carry in your head any figures you 
care to. The \-arious consonants grouped together according 
to phonetics, stand for various numerals. You carry the 
M«ries of consonants in your head by the sentence .Si.'?ney 
Mt'rlhh gave a ba\\" (the fine old English surname of Mcrlish 
will easily stick in your head) and the significance and groupings 
of the consonants — (for example, " t " with " tli " and " d ' ) 
are retained by sentences like " Onfe Tankard this Day "-- 
which might certainly mislead some people by turning up, 
w/ien an attempt at recollection is made, as Five Tankards 
this Day- thus throwhig the whole concern out of gear. 
8 (" f " and " v ") is remembered by " 8 'Varsity F'ellows,"' 
presumably those who row in boats. Given this you can get i 
the length of the great wall of China (1,251) miles), by ca rymg , 
in your head the sentence " 7"/jey Mow a high wa/i see." 
The date of Herbert Spencer's birth is legistcred in the 
significant sentence " He dcfiucs." 
•♦'•♦»* 
" Poems Lone or Short Easily learned by Heart," is the 
lieading of one !»ction. The first advice gi\en is reasonable : 
Before atteinptiag to memorise any selections of Pro.sc or 
Poetry, never fail first to read it card ulty to a.scertain what 
it is all about, , , . ' 
but the applications of the Science of Mnemonics which;" 
fellow make me shudder. The specimen taken is Foe's' 
The Hells. Four kinds of bells are dealt with. These are- 
silver, golden, bra/en and iron ; and you are adjur,'d lo;; 
remember them by the fact that the precious metals come first,; 
ill reverse order of value, and that the others follow in actual' 
( rder of value, "the cheapest of the four" coming la-jt.; 
Line by line is taken, line by line the idcasand woids are;, 
embedded in the "student's memory." Finally, we comet 
to the tuain difficulty which is (the I'rofessor certainly hitj 
the nail on the head) " to remember the number of tiniesj 
the word " bells " is repeated in the different lines": I 
We n»u>t keep- tO' the text and not resort to any foreigikj 
matter lo lieJ^j the feeble memory, 'flic words pcean, Ihrobtiinu' ' 
sohhiiig. rotiing, and tolling, occur lu the lines where the 
" bells " arc mentioned (except in that next to the last line, 
where " bells " occur three times, and there is no other word 
in that line), and- in the last line " bflls " is found once, and 
tlie words " moaning " aiul "groaning " appear. Memorise 
these .seven words of .\nalysis, to wit : pa-an. throbbing, 
sobbing, rolling, tolling, "moanino; and groaning. Thus 
pcEuH — a song of triumph — might cause heAvt-ilirobbing, 
an inward act accompanied in the present instance by sobbing, 
and tfiis outward manifestation ol grief would be intensiiied 
by the rotting of the bells ami llieir lotting.. Moaning and 
groaning are figurative expressions for (he moaning and 
groaning of the mjurners. 
I 'daresay it would work. I3ut in wliat a way and at what 
a cost ! 
Suppose you want to learn tl* order of the hues in the 
spectrum. These are Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow 
Orange, Red. Now to attempt to construct a word out of 
their initials is hopeless. Anybody who could remember the 
word \'ibgyor could remember anything ; and spelt back- 
wards as lioygbiv it is more ho])cless still. Our Professor's 
method is infallible. You let each word in turn suggest, 
) automatically, some other word to which it is linked by 
sound or association. Havipg once gone through this i)rocess 
of linking you never fail to repeat it. The little table runs 
as follows : — 
Violet . . . . let go 
Indigo . . . , indigestion . . " blues " 
Blue . . . . blue sea . . . . sea green 
(Jreen . . . . green corn . . npo corn 
Yellow .. .. yellow fruit 
Orange .. .. i )ranf;cnien .. fight 
Ked . . . . blood spilt . . bl(Md-red 
You need not commit it deliberately to memory. You have 
only to " take it in." And there you are ; fitted up withthu 
spectrum for the rest of your life. 
« * * * * 
But here wo come to a drawback. I have never before been 
able to retain the order of these colours nor knew where 
to start: I shall not go wrong again ; which is something 
gained. But what have 1 not lost ? Henceforward I shall 
never be able to divorce the spectrum from that trail of 
irrelevant and, in some cases, deplorably material associations. 
The beautiful colours of the prism will conjure up in my 
mind a mixture of \cllow fruit and indigestitm, whilst a 
preposterous jingle of " let go, Indigo, let go. Indigo," soimds 
in my ears. And my heart will refuse to leap up when I 
behold a Rainbow in the sky for the simple reason that across 
the Rainbow tljcTq will stream a vision of battling hosts o{ 
Sir F^dward Carbon's and Mr. Kedmoiid's followers throwing 
rivets and bottles at each other's heads and shouting " T,i 
Hell with King William " and " To Hell with the Pojxjs." 
One of n.-iturc's most magnificent spectacles hencefortli will 
find me emotionless, with horn-blind eyes. And scrawled 
across everything else will be the iiame and jwrtrait of Pro: 
fessor Marcus Dwiglit Darrowe (Loisette) from whom I 
learned the detestable scries. 
***** 
Therefore, I hold that my correspondent did mc a bad turn 
in sending me this book. He told me, in his coveting l-jtter, 
that with .the help of this and similar systems, comm- rcial 
travellers have doubled their iniomes, simple subalterns have 
won positioiis in the Intelligence (yoir can remember by a 
simple associative device, • that intelKgence officers wear 
green tabs -7I dace npt indicjite my,method of remembering 
who weais red ones), that works-managers have doubled 
their outputs and oufside brokers theii commissions. AdvaU' 
tagos are offered to me too. When one word suggests anothef 
I shall obviously never be at a loss for another. But to ,go 
thrcugti life and find that every idea has a siring of multi- 
coloured irrelevancies tj ailing after it like a kite's tail, and 
that 1 cannot think of Bethmann without publishers (the 
liitt of bookmakess is obvious), or of Mr, Balfour without 
thinkingof the Four of S|)ade,s ! 1 envy people with a g(j -d 
natural memory. But the mechanical aid to memory whicli 
assists you, by.meags of a .sentence of awful gibberish, to 
remember how many pet)ple t-liere wqre in Sydney, N.S.W,, 
in the year -iStH— no, 1 W(mld prefer my income to remain 
where it is. ■ 
'■ " •^' f hav'eTc H tn i fed Tny tx)ri c5|>ondeiTt liis book. 
