Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1898 — The Storehouse of the Mind. [ARTICLE]

The Storehouse of the Mind.

Things near us are seen of the size of life, things at a distance are diminished to the size of the understanding. We measure the universe by ourseves, and even comprehend the texture of our own being only piecemeal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot, as it were, unfold the whole web of our existence; we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived, and with which we have Intimate associations, every one must have found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression; we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names that we had not thought of for years; but for the time all the rest of the world is forgotten.—William Hazlett