For the first time in history we are relieved of
the necessity of managing his affairs for him. He is not a broken
dam this time--he is the Flood!

It must have been about this time that Clemens developed an intense,
even if a less permanent, interest in another matter which was to
benefit the species. He was one day walking up Fifth Avenue when he
noticed the sign,

PROFESSOR LOISETTE
SCHOOL OF MEMORY
The Instantaneous Art of Never Forgetting

Clemens went inside. When he came out he had all of Professor Loisette's
literature on "predicating correlation," and for the next several days
was steeping himself in an infusion of meaningless words and figures
and sentences and forms, which he must learn backward and forward and
diagonally, so that he could repeat them awake and asleep in order to
predicate his correlation to a point where remembering the ordinary
facts of life, such as names, addresses, and telephone numbers, would be
a mere diversion.

It was another case of learning the multitudinous details of the
Mississippi River in order to do the apparently simple thing of steering
a boat from New Orleans to St. Louis, and it is fair to say that, for
the time he gave it, he achieved a like success. He was so enthusiastic
over this new remedy for human distress that within a very brief time he
was sending out a printed letter recommending Loisette to the public at
large. Here is an extract:

... I had no SYSTEM--and some sort of rational order of
procedure is, of course, necessary to success in any study. Well,
Loisette furnished me a system. I cannot undertake to say it is the
best, or the worst, because I don't know what the other systems are.
Loisette, among other cruelties, requires you to memorize a great
long string of words that, haven't any apparent connection or
meaning--there are perhaps 500 of these words, arranged in maniacal
lines of 6 to 8 or 9 words in each line--71 lines in all. Of course
your first impulse is to resign, but at the end of three or four
hours you find to your surprise that you've GOT them and can deliver
them backward or forward without mistake or hesitation. Now, don't
you see what a world of confidence that must necessarily breed?
--confidence in a memory which before you wouldn't even venture to
trust with the Latin motto of the U. S. lest it mislay it and the
coun