part played by the motor memory in your case, is as follows:

Have a friend or member of your family make three lists, each containing fifteen unrelated words, on three separate sheets of paper. Read the first list once carefully, then without referring to the paper, see how many you can repeat. Have someone read aloud, once, the second list, and see how many you can remember. Then take the third list, write each word once, and test yourself as before. Following is a list of words which you can use for the last test:

When you have determined which is your predominant type of memory, that is the method you should use most frequently, for by so doing you are making the most of your natural faculties. None of the methods, however, should be neglected, and the more of them you use for any given fact, the more certain you are of remembering that fact.

LESSON II

IMPRESSION, ATTENTION, INTEREST

If you will refer to the definitions of memory given at the beginning, you will note that in each of them occurs the idea of the fact or event being again in consciousness. Many people fail to remember because they never acquire a first impression. Without a first impression, the best memory in the world is helpless. If you are to remember a fact, that fact must previously have existed in your consciousness for a measurable period of time: there must have been a first impression. No system of memory culture can give you a magic power of making something out of nothing.

The impressions which are best remembered are those which are

(1) New or startling,

(2) Most interesting,

(3) Clearest or most vivid,
(4) Frequently repeated,

(5) Most recently acquired.

(1) One of the chief reasons why we remember the experiences of childhood so much better than those of our later years is that during this period the mind is fresh and

even ordinary facts and events are surprising.

(2) Most persons who say they have poor memories are usually found to have excellent memories for some particular kind of facts-and it is always for something that is of special interest to them. A woman may have a very poor memory for political facts, but an excellent one for the details of a dress which she admires. In the case of a man, this might be reversed. Some persons have a good memory for numbers but a poor memory for words, and vice versa. There are many young office clerks whose memory for business facts is so poor that they never rise above mediocrity, who nevertheless exhibit an amazing capacity for retaining baseball scores and batting averages. If these same young men would take a corresponding degree of interest in their work, and would spend as much time studying and thinking about it, advancement in position and salary would take care of itself. To rise above the other fellow, it is only necessary to do better work than the other fellow.

(3) It is a mistake to blame the memory when the real trouble lies in poor observation. Can you tell the relative position of the horns and ears on a cow? Which way does the head face on a two-cent postage stamp? If you cannot answer such questions as these correctly, it is not because you have

not seen, but because you have not observed -because you have not acquired an impression.

The power of observation can be wonderfully developed. Readers of Kipling's "Kim" will recall the amazingly detailed description by the native Hindu boy of the fifteen precious stones which were shown to him for a few minutes only, and then put out of his sight. You can develop your power of observation by practice. As you walk along a business street where there are stores, stop a few minutes before some window containing a number of small articles. A jeweler's window is good. Look over the display carefully, examining each object separately first, then the entire window as a whole. Then pass on and try to recall what is in the window.

Another excellent means of developing the power of observation is by drawing on paper a simple picture of some ordinary object such as an inkstand or a vase. You need not be an artist to do this and the result of your effort may have no artistic value, but that does not matter. You will probably be surprised at the details you will notice that you had not observed before.

In cultivating the power of observation, a little practice repeated every day is much more effective than a great effort followed by a period of inaction. Set yourself a little

daily task of observing something carefully, picturing it in the mind in all its details. On the following day call up the picture, reproducing it as clearly as you can, and then compare the original object, and note any inaccuracies. Five minutes a day given to this is one of the best investments of time you can make, and the resulting development of your powers of observation-and consequently, of your memory—will repay you many times over. Accurate observation gives the clear mental impressions which are so essential to good memory.

(4) Frequent repetition of an impression is the method which is perhaps more at the command of the individual than any other. Every mental impression cannot be new or startling; all cannot be equally interesting, and certainly every impression cannot be most recent. We can, however, repeat ideas to ourselves as much as we wish. Probably everyone has heard the old saying, "Repetition is the mother of learning.' This is only another way of saying that repetition is the mother of memory. Facts which we find dull but which we nevertheless find it necessary to remember, can be retained by this method.

(5) The only way we can keep recent the impressions we wish to retain is by repetition. When we wish to memorize poetry or any other literary matter word for word, repetition is the method we must employ.