Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1901 — TRICKS OF MEMORY. [ARTICLE]

TRICKS OF MEMORY.

Notable Example* of Forgetfulness that Are Supposed to Be True. The first man to start a school for the training of memory was a Greek, Simonides, who read one of his poetic compositions to a large audience and so fascinated them that when he bowed and withdrew from the building they sat spellbound. The roof caved iu and killed them all, mangling them so that the bodies were unrecognizable, but Simonides came to the rescue of the despairing relatives and said he could remember where each person in the audience sat and who he was. As there was no one to dispute his decisions his identification was satisfactory, and he profited by the enthusiasm to start a memory school. A young woman of no education fell ill in a small German town. She could neither read nor write, yet she raved in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, aud the simpie villagers thought she was possessed of the devil. Investigation proved that at the age of 9 she had been taken by a charitable old Protestant pastor. It was his custom for years to walk up and down a passage of the house into which the kitchen opened and read to himself in a loud voice out of his books. These books were ransacked by the physician in charge of the curious case, and who had made inquiries into the sick girl's past life, andTn them were found the identical Greek and Latin passages which the girl in her delirium had repeated. There is an authentic case of a brilliant young woman, happily married, who had a long illness, the result of which was that when she recovered she had lost every recollection of her life from the day of her marriage, inclusive of the ceremony. The rest of her life up to that point she remembered clearly. At first she pushed-her husband and her child from her in alarm, but her parents and friends have convinced her she is married and has a son. She believes their word of necessity, though she lias never recovered her memory of that one year which is lost to her.