ns, and they were practicing
blindly, and without proper method or direction, the excellent system
which he teaches. The thing, then, to do--and it is the final and
simple truth which Loisette teaches--is to travel over this ground in
the other direction--to cement the fact which you wish to remember to
some other fact or word which you know will be brought out by the
implied conditions--and thus you will always be able to travel from
your given starting point to the thing which you wish to call to mind.

[Illustration: _a_ _b_ _c_ _d_ _e_]

To illustrate: let the broken line in the annexed diagram represent a
train of thought. If we connect the idea "_a_" with "_e_" through the
steps _b_, _c_ and _d_, the tendency of the mind ever afterward will be
to get to _e_ from _a_ that way, or from any of the intermediates that
way. It seems as though a channel were cut in our mindstuff along which
the memory flows. How to make it flow this way will be seen later on.
Loisette, in common with all mnemonic teachers, uses the old devise of
representing numbers by letter--and as this is the first and easiest
step in the art, this seems to be the most logical place to introduce
the accepted equivalents of the Arabic numerals:

0 is always represented by _s_, _z_ or _c_ soft.

1 is always represented by _t_, _th_ or _d_.

2 is always represented by _n_.

3 is always represented by _m_.

4 is always represented by _r_.

5 is always represented by _l_.

6 is always represented by _sh, j, ch_ soft or _g_ soft.

7 is always represented by _g_ hard, _kc_ hard, _q_ or final _ng_.

8 is always represented by _f_ or _v_.

9 is always represented by _p_ or _b_.

All the other letters are used simply to fill up. Double letters in a
word count only as one. In fact, the system goes by sound, not by
spelling--for instance, "this" or "dizzy" would stand for _ten_;
"catch" or "gush" would stand for 76, and the only difficulty is to
make some word or phrase which will contain only the significant
letters in the proper order, filled out with non-significants into some
guise of meaning or intelligibility.[2] Suppose you wish to get some
phrase or word that would express the number 3,685, you arrange the
letters this way:

+-----+-----+-----+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| | 3 | ^ | 6 | ^ | 8 | ^ | 5 |
+-----+-----+-----+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| a | m | a | sh | a | f | a | l |
| e |