tell him its place in the sentence.  He was furnished with the French word ‘est’, and was told it was second in a sentence of three words.  The next, gentleman gave him the German word ‘verloren’ and said it was the third in a sentence of four words.  He asked the next gentleman for one detail in a sum in addition; another for one detail in a sum of subtraction; others for single details in mathematical problems of various kinds; he got them.  Intermediates gave him single words from sentences in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other languages, and told him their places in the sentences.  When at last everybody had furnished him a single rag from a foreign sentence or a figure from a problem, he went over the ground again, and got a second word and a second figure and was told their places in the sentences and the sums; and so on and so on.  He went over the ground again and again until he had collected all the parts of the sums and all the parts of the sentences—­and all in disorder, of course, not in their proper rotation.  This had occupied two hours.

The Brahmin now sat silent and thinking, a while, then began and repeated all the sentences, placing the words in their proper order, and untangled the disordered arithmetical problems and gave accurate answers to them all.

In the beginning he had asked the company to throw almonds at him during the two hours, he to remember how many each gentleman had thrown; but none were thrown, for the Viceroy said that the test would be a sufficiently severe strain without adding that burden to it.

General Grant had a fine memory for all kinds of things, including even names and faces, and I could have furnished an instance of it if I had thought of it.  The first time I ever saw him was early in his first term as President.  I had just arrived in Washington from the Pacific coast, a stranger and wholly unknown to the public, and was passing the White House one morning when I met a friend, a Senator from Nevada.  He asked me if I would like to see the President.  I said I should be very glad; so we entered.  I supposed that the President would be in the midst of a crowd, and that I could look at him in peace and security from a distance, as another stray cat might look at another king.  But it was in the morning, and the Senator was using a privilege of his office which I had not heard of—­the privilege of intruding upon the Chief Magistrate’s working hours.  Before I knew it, the Senator and I were in the presence, and there was none there but we three.  General Grant got slowly up from his table, put his pen down, and stood before me with the iron expression of a man who had not smiled for seven years, and was not intending to smile for another seven.  He looked me steadily in the eyes—­mine lost confidence and fell.  I had never confronted a great man before, and was in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency.  The Senator said:—­