[MARCH,
relief were on their way to the unfortunate people of the fire
swept town.
Much credit is due Dr. Egle, not only for his particular articles,
the longest and most complete in the book, but also for the careful
editing and correlating which has made a well balanced volume.
The illustrations are for the most part excellent and appropriate.
Each chapter is headed by a portrait of the writer, and there are
several of Governor Curtin, together with views of places made
memorable by his life.
Altogether it is a book. which will be of much interest to a large
number of people. It should find a place in every public library,
particularly, where it will doubtless find many appeciative readers.
W. B.
One of the conditions of good scholarship is a good memory.
Memory is the storehouse of knowledge, and the thinking must
be poor and narrow when the knowledge is meager and uncertain.
MemorY, like all other powers of the mind, needs to be culti
vated. It has its own laws of action, and attains power and
expertness by right practice, Before printing was discovered,
when books were rare and costly, men carried whole histories and
long poems in memory, and many gained their living by reciting
in cottages and palaces stories in prose or rhyme. Now men
read and do not depend so much on memory. Great memories
are scarce, and for lack of memory the work of years of study
goes often into early oblivion. Let him who aims at high scholar
ship learn how to remember.
Take for example a brick, and pause a moment to think; it will
suggest to you the place where it was made, the clay and kiln,
the houses and walks for which bricks are used, the arts of brick
making and a hundred facts, scenes or events in which bricks
have played a part. So any article, act, event, word,
thought or feeling in mind may suggest hundreds of other things,
actions, events, and ideas to which it stands related in place, time,
resemblance or causation. The wider the knowledge the greater
the number and variety of the suggested ideas.
This power of suggestion, called by philosophers the " Associa
tion of ideas," lies at the bottom of both memory and imagina
tion. If the suggested idea is recognized as having been in the
The Free Lance
HOW TO REMEMBER