The freak memory is not worth striving for, but a good working memory decidedly is.  Your power as a speaker will depend to a large extent upon your ability to retain impressions and call them forth when occasion demands, and that sort of memory is like muscle—­it responds to training.

What Not to Do

It is sheer misdirected effort to begin to memorize by learning words by rote, for that is beginning to build a pyramid at the apex.  For years our schools were cursed by this vicious system—­vicious not only because it is inefficient but for the more important reason that it hurts the mind.  True, some minds are natively endowed with a wonderful facility in remembering strings of words, facts, and figures, but such are rarely good reasoning minds; the normal person must belabor and force the memory to acquire in this artificial way.

Again, it is hurtful to force the memory in hours of physical weakness or mental weariness.  Health is the basis of the best mental action and the operation of memory is no exception.

Finally, do not become a slave to a system.  Knowledge of a few simple facts of mind and memory will set you to work at the right end of the operation.  Use these principles, whether included in a system or not, but do not bind yourself to a method that tends to lay more stress on the way to remember than on the development of memory itself.  It is nothing short of ridiculous to memorize ten words in order to remember one fact.

The Natural Laws of Memory

Concentrated attention at the time when you wish to store the mind is the first step in memorizing—­and the most important one by far.  You forgot the fourth of the list of articles your wife asked you to bring home chiefly because you allowed your attention to waver for an instant when she was telling you.  Attention may not be concentrated attention.  When a siphon is charged with gas it is sufficiently filled with the carbonic acid vapor to make its influence felt; a mind charged with an idea is charged to a degree sufficient to hold it.  Too much charging will make the siphon burst; too much attention to trifles leads to insanity.  Adequate attention, then, is the fundamental secret of remembering.

Generally we do not give a fact adequate attention when it does not seem important.  Almost everyone has seen how the seeds in an apple point, and has memorized the date of Washington’s death.  Most of us have—­perhaps wisely—­forgotten both.  The little nick in the bark of a tree is healed over and obliterated in a season, but the gashes in the trees around Gettysburg are still apparent after fifty years.  Impressions that are gathered lightly are soon obliterated.  Only deep impressions can be recalled at will.  Henry Ward Beecher said:  “One intense hour will do more than dreamy years.”  To memorize ideas and words, concentrate on them until they are fixed firmly and deeply in your mind and accord to them their true importance.  LISTEN with the mind and you will remember.