The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1873-04-11


cable weighs about 200 pounds per knot
more than the previous cables, but it is
even stronger in proportion and is cal
culated to last at least twice as long
under the same conditions.
Lying and Treacherous Memories.
Few memories are entirely truthful.
We many of us find them false mainly
to or own cost or inconvenience. We
are sure we put a missing article where
we did not put it, that we read a pas
sage in the middle of a right-hand page
when it turns out to be at the top of
the left the eye of memory has the
most distinct recollection, and yet it is
not true. The most DISTINGUISHED wit
nesses at trial contradict one another
because each is sure of what he neither
saw nor heard exactly as he thinks he
saw or heard it. Nobody is willing to
attach any moral faint to these involun-
tary errors, though a certain steadiness
of observation, a habitual holding self
in check, and putting positivenesst to the
test, might have preserved us from it.
Again, certain ideas, certain forms of
expression, slide into the memory un-
awares, and pass current for original
thought, and betray people into invol-
untary plagiarism. We suspect that a
great many persons assume to them
selves a faculty of invention when they
~ oh h. 4has
PRODUCING itself as an original concep-
ton, and performing its feats in dis
guise. For many suffer under the re-
verse deception, of which Charles Lamb
accuses himself when lamenting the
strange fatality through which every
thing he touched turned into a lie re-
lating how he once quoted two lines
from translation of Dante which Haz-
lit very greatly admired, and quoted
in book as proof of the stupendous
power of that poet. But no such lines
were to be found in the translation
searched for the purpose; whereupon
he adds, &" I must have dreamed them,
for 1 am quite sure I did not forge them
plaintively concludes, "to have lying
memory p On the other hand, cor.
rect memory is the most necessary of al
aids to the liar, as we are reminded by
n haohneyed proverb; and it also
prompts to lying in unprincipled hands.
Wood tells story of Hosl1yns, the
Winchester boy, who, having neglected
TO write his verse exercise, glanced for
a minute or two over the shoulder of q
more diigent school fellow, and upon
the master calling him up, said he had
lost his paper, but if he might be al
lowed he would repeat without bool
the 20 verses he had written, which ht
was permitted to do. The other boy
was called next, and showed the verses
which Hoskyns had just repeated. and
being taken for the thief, was sorely
whipped. Next to the lying memory
and far more common, is the PREACHER
GUS memory that fails us at a pinch
hiding itself in darkness, leaving III
cognizant of its existence but eludine
our grasp. Nothing is more tantaliZine
than this state Of mind. The man whC
feels the fact or word or name fitting
Just out of his reach is misery to him
self and everybody else. Very few
people have philosophy enough to Civ,
in to reflect that what they search foi
in sach restless persistence matters t
nobody for the time being they hav,
lost part of themselves and worry afte
1.-THE Saturday Review.
A YOUNG man who cot on the train a