ot to undertake to memorize too much at once. Learning a
succession of fifty names slowly, he says, will so discipline the memory
for names, as to partially or even permanently remove all embarrassment
from that source. I may add that a long table of names or dates, or any
prolonged extract in verse or prose, if learned by repeating it over and
over as a whole, will be less tenaciously retained in memory, than if
committed in parts.

The highest form of memory is actually unconscious, _i. e._, that in
which what we would recall comes to us spontaneously, without effort or
lapse of time in thinking about it. It is this kind of memory that has
been possessed by all the notable persons who have been credited with
knowing everything, or with never forgetting anything. It is not to be
reckoned to their credit, so much as to their good fortune. What merit is
there in having a good memory, when one cannot help remembering?

There is one caution to be given to those who are learning to improve a
memory naturally weak. When such a one tries to recall a date, or name,
or place, or idea, or book, it frequently happens that the endeavor fails
utterly. The more he tries, the more obstinately the desired object fails
to respond. As the poet Pope wrote about the witless author:

"You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home."

In these cases, no attempt to force the memory should be made, nor should
the attention be kept long on the subject, for this course only injures
the faculty, and leads to confusion of mind. To persist in a constantly
baffled effort to recover a word, or other forgotten link in memory, is a
laborious attempt which is itself likely to cause failure, and induce a
distrust of the memory which is far from rational. The forgotten object
will probably recur in no long time after, when least expected.

Much discursive reading is not only injurious to the faculty of memory,
but may be positively destructive of it. The vast extent of our modern
world of reviews, magazines and newspapers, with their immense variety of
subjects, dissipates the attention instead of concentrating it, and
becomes fatal to systematic thought, tenacious memory, and the
acquirement of real knowledge. The mind that is fed upon a diet of
morning and evening newspapers, mainly or solely, will become flabby,
uncertain, illogical, frivolous, and, in fact, little better than a
scatterbrains. As