Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1891 — A Woman’s Memory. [ARTICLE]

A Woman’s Memory.

“Memory, the warder of the brain,” says Shakspeare, but with many it would seem that the full meaning of the aphorism is sadly lost. Almost everyone has some sort of a memory, good, bad or indifferent, as the case may be, but one person out of every fifty has some process or other intended to aid their memory, hoping in time to be able to retain in mind all matters worthy of retention. This recalls to a writer in the Kansas City Times a story told of a young lady friend, who has lately taken on the fad of “memory brushing.” She confided in a gentleman acquaintance that she was poor at dates, a sad failure on place and weak on events. “How may I learn to retain things in my mind as they should be?” she exclaimed, as if in disgust at her intellectual shortcomings. “Oh, that is easy,” replied he, “as all you have to do in each case is to form some little couplet with anything you wish to remember and you will never forget it.” “Explain,” she said. “For instance,” the gentleman replied, “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” The young lady was in a high state of glee at such a practical and really beautiful manner of aiding memory, and her thanks were profuse. Time went by—two days, I believe —when the two met again. ‘ ‘How are you getting on with the couplets?” asked he. “Capitally?” she exclaimed. “A pound of candy goes that you don’t remember what I told you, verbatim,” he banteringly said, and she took the bet on the spot. Then she rattled off the words: “In fourteen hundred and ninety-three Columbus sailed the deep blue sea.”