in some hidden dungeon, carefully locked up, but he had lost the key. Availability, readiness, promptness are essentials to efficiency. The hat-boy at the hotel dining-room would be useless did his memory not act promptly, instantly. To-morrow will not do. Now is the accepted time. This efficient, prompt, responsive memory is the one you need and desire. It is worth striving for. The prospector wanders over the mountains, canyons, deserts, for years, seeking the precious ore in most unlikely places. He is always buoyed up with the hope, some day, of striking it rich. Are you as earnest in your desire for memory development as he? If so, careful, systematic, daily exercise of the various faculties of the mind and memory will give to you this golden possession. Reread here what has been quoted earlier from David Pryde's "What Books to Read and How to Read." The hints therein contained are worth their weight in gold to the really earnest student. But rest assured of this: If you would have a good memory, you must work for it. Give your whole attention to whatever you read or hear. Concentrate. Compare the parts of the composition with the whole. Seek its excellencies, study its deficiencies. Reflect upon it from every angle. Write out in your own language the facts, or the ideas. of what you have heard or read. Then use daily what you have gained. Knowledge stored away in the mind is not only useless, it is positively injurious. Use is the law of life. Give your knowledge, your ideas, your reflections away. Tell them to your intimates, your friends. Write them to your correspondents. For the more you give the more you will find you have. There is a giving that increases and a withholding that impoverishes, and in nothing is this more apparent than in the giving of the riches of the mind or memory. Each time one recites a well-liked poem for the benefit and blessing of others, the more firmly he fixes it in his own mind. "There is that which scattereth, and yet increaseth." In the scattering of your gems of mind and heart, you are increasing your own store. Not only give freely, but give often. The daily use of what you have gained is an advantage. Avail yourself of every reasonable opportunity to use your newly acquired powers, and your newly acquired knowledge. Let me repeat, use is the law of life. To learn something new daily is a good motto, but to use what you have learned is even better. You gain ease of recollection by daily exercising the faculty of recollection. And if your memory balks, refuses to act, compel it to obey you. If you make a demand upon it and it fails to respondyou cannot remember-do not let the matter go by. Demand of the memory that it bring back that which you require. Keep the need before you. In this constant, persistent, cheerful, willing use of the memory lies great happiness and content. "It is more blessed to give than to receive." The more, in reason, the athlete uses his muscles the stronger they become. And think of the radiant joy that is the natural accompaniment of a healthy, vigorous body. What constant pleasure is his who calls upon a physical body which readily and willingly responds! Equally so is it with the memory and all the mind. Activity keeps it in health. In this glorious condition it readily responds to all calls, it is radiantly alive, and I know of no joy greater that can be given to man than that in body, mind, and soul he is a radiating center of activity, receiving and giving on every hand. In conclusion, here are a few practical words upon the other side of the question, on forgetting, for there is a forgetting that is of great help to the power of remembering. Fix these precepts firmly in your mind: Forget evil imaginations. Forget the slander you have heard. Forget the injuries done you by your enemies. Forget the misunderstandings of yesterday. Forget all malice, all fault-finding, all injuries, all hardness, all unlovely and distressing things. Start out every day with a clean sheet. Remember only the sweet, beautiful and lovely things, and you will thus be as a human sun of righteousness, with healing in your rays |