American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1874-09-12
Marvels OF Memory.

Instances of remarkable memory, gen
orally supposed to be assisted by mncmo-
tcchny, have been given from the time
of Cicero, who concludes that memory Is
not, therefore, of the heart, blood, brain
or atoms; whether of air or fire he Is
not, like the rest, ashamed to say he Is
ignorant; he undertakes, however, to
assert that it is divine, having regard to
such men as Cineas, the ambassador of
Pyrrhus, who saluted the Senate and all
the people by their names the second
day after his arrival at Rome; of Theo-
dectes, the disciple of Aristotle, and OF
Hortensius, a man of his own time. We
have most of us heard of Joseph Scaliger,
who learned the twice twenty-four books
of the Had and Odyssey in three weeks; ;
of Avicenna, who repeated by heart the
whole of the Koran at the age OF ten; OF
Lipsius, who was willing to reclte the
histories of Tacitus word for word, Civ
ing any one leave to plunge a dagger
into his body if he made a mistake-an
idle license, for few would have cared to
run the resultant risk; of the youth of
Corsica, of good appearance, mentioned
by Muretus who recited all the barbar-
Gus words the latter had written till he
was tired of writing and stopped at last,
as it was necessary to stop somewhere,
while the youth, like Oliver, asked for
was no boaster, and he told me he could
repeat in that way $4,000 words. For
my own part l made trial of him after
many days and found what he had said
true" This Corsican, as those others,
was no doubt of soul disdaining silver
and gold or he might have made
his fortune 10y offering his services to an
Emperor. OF Francis Suarez, who, after
the witness of Strada, could quote the
.1,,1, e ln flfl, nrfs
works would fill small library, from
the egg to the apple. Of DIR. Thomas
Fuller, who could name in order all the
signs on both sides of the way from the
beginning of Paternoster row at Ave
Maria lane to the bottom of Chcapside
to Stocks Market, now the Mansion
House. Of Magliabecchi, whose name
is pleasantly and permanently associated
with spiders and the proof of the lost
Ms. OF William Lyon, who, for bowl
of punch, a liquor of which he was eX-
ceedingly fond, repeated Daily Adrer
tiser, in the morning, which he had read
once only, and then in the course of a
debauch over night.
We might extend this paper far be-
yond its normal dimensions by mention
of such names as Jedediah Buxton, who,
if his witness be true, could, by some
strange mnemotechny of his own, multi
ply thirty-nine figures by thirty-nine
without paper, and amuse himself when
at the theater by compilation of the
words used by Garrick, and at another
time by that of the pots of beer drank
during twelve years of his life; of Zerah
Colburn, mere child, of whom there
remains on record a testimony that he
could tell the number of seconds in fifty
eight years in less time than the question
could be written down; or of that prod
Try of parts, Pascal, to whom reference
was made at the beginning of this paper
who is said to have forgotten nothing
thought, read or done during his ration
al age. This, says the author of the
essay on the "Conduct of the Human
Understanding" is a thing SO wholly in
consistent with our experience of human
nature that to doubt it is no reprchensi-
BILE stretch of -CormhiU Mag
milne