The St. Johns herald., 1889-04-18
MARVELLOUS MEMORIES.
What Men May Do Who Asziduously Gull
 fivate Their Memories.

TeLentlFe memory, ana was eSpeclaIly WelL up in Dlckeus' works. One evening, says writer in Welcome, in the carly part of 1868, Dickens, then on reading tour in tue States, was dining with Charles Sumner when MF. Stanton and some others were present. The War Minister was put to the test, and when started could repeat from memory a chapter of any of Dickens books, showing 2 much greater knowledge of the works than their author could boast. Mir. Stanton accounted for this intimate knowledge of Dickens by mentioning the habit which he had formed during the war of invariably reading something by the author of "Pickwick" before going to bed at night. The late Bishop Prince Lee, first Bishop Of Manchester, was similarly gifted, 1t is related of him that being once, at an evening party, started by lady with a line quoted from "MarmIon," he went right on with the poem from memory, and could have recited the whole. As further test, the same lady quoted few words from conversation in ''Ivanhoe," where upon the Bishop repeated the whole chapter correctly from memory, But greater than any of these was Lord Macaulay. From very early age the retentive- ness of his memory was extraordinary. When only three or four years of age his mind mechanically retained the form of what he read so that, as his maid said, he talked ''quite printed words" Once as a child, when making an afternoon call with his father, he pickedup Scott's 'sLay of tho Last Minstrel" for the first time, and quietly devoured the treasure while his seniors were engaged in conversa- fion. When they returned home the boy went to hls mother, who at the time was confined to her bed, and sitting down at the bedside repeated what he had been reading, by the canto, until she was tired. Later in life his wonderful memory was always subject of interest to his friends, and occa- sionally was put to searching tests. One day at board meeting ct the British Museum Macaulay wrote down from memory in three parallel columns on each of four pages of foolscap complete list of the Cam bridge senior Wranglers, with dates and col leges attached, for the one hundred years during which arecord of the names had been kept in the University calendar. "On an- other occasion" says Trcvelyan, "Sir David Dundas asked: 'Macaulay, do you know your Popesf 'No,' was the answer, I al ways get wrong among the Innoccnts.' But, can you say your Archbishops of Canter- buryl' Amy fool,' said Macaulay, could say his Archbishops of Canterbury back ward and he went of at score, drawing breath only once in'order to remark on the oddity of their having been both an Arch bishop Bancroft and anArchbishop Bancroft, until Sir David stopped him at Cranmer." Macaulay once said that if, by any possible chance, all the copies of Paradise Lost" and the sPllgrims Progress" n existence were destroyed, he could write both out again, complete, from recollection, When O'Connell made his motion in 1884 for the repeal of the union, Mir. Tennant, member of Parliament for Belfast, delivered speech lasting for three and a half hours, full of fig pres and calculations, entirely from mem ory, in which he trusted so completely that he sent the manuscript of his speech to the newspapers before he delivered it. His confidence was not misplaced, for the ora tion was spoken without single mistake, or even momentary hesitation. Another Irish M. P, Mr. Robert Dillon Brown, mem Der for Mayo, had the same useful faculty, He would dictate speech to an amanuensls, and twenty-four hours afterwards, without looking at it or thinking of the matter in the meantime, could repeat 1t word for word Woodfall, editor of the Morning Chronicle, and brother of Junius' publisher, was ablo to report accurately in the morn ing the debate of the previous evening with out taking any notes. In some cases the mental action involved in feats of this nat ure would seem to be quite mechanical and unintelligent. In the newspapers of Jan uary, 1920, there are accounts of an eXtraoF- dinary man. who was known as " Memory corner Thompson" This man. although he could hardly remember any thing he heard, could yet retain perfectly henames and de- scriptions of large collections of objects that met his eye. He could take an inventory of the contents of house from cellar to attic merely by surveying them, and could afterward write it out from mem- ory. He could draw from recollec- tion accurate plans of many Lon don parishes and districts, with every street, alley, public building, public house, etc., duly noted, down 10 the minutest typographical detail, such as pumps, trees, bow-windows and posts, all correctly marked. Conspicuous instances of this me chanical kind of memory are to be found among the famous mental calculators. Jed ediah Buxton was celebrity of this kind about the mlddic of the last century. He had but little education and, indeed, was not able to write his own name. But in
 
 powers were wonderful The following is a specimen of the problems which, when put to the test, he solved mentally in few minutes: Find how many cubical elghths of an inch there arc in quadrangular mass measuring 23,lI5,7S yards long, 2,64s, ,732 yards wide and 54,9j5 yards thick. When in London in l754 he was taken to see Gar rick as Richard III. at Qrury Lane. The play did not interest him, but he occupied himself in reckoning the number of words he heard and in counting the number of steps made by the dancers. The American boy, Zerah Colburn, who came to London in 1872, was a similar phenomenon. He had no knowledge of the rules of arithmetic, and was quite unable to explain how he ar rived at the answers to the problems sub mitted to hlm. Mental power of this nat ure would seem to imply an unwholesome development of one part of the brain at the expense of the rest
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