Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-04-22

the elderly gentleman had been in the
document room before was in 1886, when he
went there on the business Mr.. Smith de-
scribed. Mr.. Smith had never seen him at
any other time.
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.
Another instance of Mr.. Smiths remark
able knowledge of not only the number and
title, but the contents of the document in
his possession was related to me. Some
years ago a Senator sent to the document
room the letter of a constituent asking for
a copy of bill for his relief introduced IN
the House five years before. The appro-
priation in the bill had been so cut down in
the Senate that he had refused to receive
the money. In the request for the bill
no mention was made of the damage
| for which he had sought relief.
There was no guide to the document except
the name of the man. Mr.. Smith hunted
for this name in the index of the document
room; it was nowhere to be found. Mr..
Smith racked his memory, but he could not
place the name. Later in the day he was at
home when there came to his mind, without
warning, the scene of the sinking OF the
monitor Tecumseh in Mobile bay. On the
dav following he looked through his index
q
Tecumseh. Turning to it he found, far
down in the body of the bill, provision ap-
propriating so much money for the relief of
the man whose name had been sent to him.
This man, it seems, had been the purchaser
of the wreck of the Tecumseh. The Navy
Department cancelled the sale and he came
before Congress with claim for damages
1t was Mr.. Smith, knowledge of these facts
at the time coupled with his remarkable
association and retention of ideas, that en-
abled him to trace this bill five years after
it had attracted the attention of Congress,
and with such clew to its identity as would
have been almost useless in other hands.
Mr.. Smith has been in charge of the docu-
ment room since 1873. In his 16 years of
service he has handled probably 15Q 900
documents. Their very multiplicity would
puzzle the ordinary mind. Mr.. Smith has
no idea how he remembers; that is he has no
system and he makes no great effort to re-
member.
A TRICK OF MEMORY.
He goes over document when it comes
into his possession and when there have been
two or three calls for it he has so familiar
lied himself with it that if it is again asked
for, he has only to look into one of the many
thousand pigeon holes of his memory and
there is its number slowed safely away. 1
asked him one day if these numbers did not
haunt him. 1 remembered my first expert
ence with the typewriter when, after half
hour of practice during the day, 1 found
myself night and day, sleeping and waking,
picking out the letters on an imaginary
keyboard and spelling pollysyllabic words
with them. But Mr.. Smith has none of
these troubles. His memory is docile. It
is quiet when its services are not needed and
it seldom annoys its owner. There was a
time some years ago, when Mr.. Smith was
troubled with insomnia, that the numbers
ran a rapid race night and day through his
brain. Even now when he works himself
into state of nervous excitement during
the day he finds himself at night hunting
the shelves of an imaginary document room
for phantom bills. But ordinarily he is not
troubled in this way.
Of recent years, however, he has had a
new and unique trouble. He finds himself
transposing figures. If a document num-
bered ], ,064 comes into the document room
Mr.. Smiths memory is likely to make of
that number !, ,046, and when I say ''likely"
L mean rather mot unlikely" for it is not
often that Mr. Smith finds his memory
playing him so fantastic trick. He recog-
nizes it so well, however, that he makes due
that document he is seeking is numbered
1,O64 and he finds upon examination that
No. 1,064 is not the document he wants he
turns Immediately to No. 1,046. He knows
that this little failing more often takes the
form of transposing the last two figures of
number, and he governs himself accord
ingly.
A COINCIDENCE.
I spoke of the recurrent introduction of
the same bill in two or more successive
Congresses. This is complicated by the in
PRODUCTION of like bills in House and Sen
ate. To have proper idea OF the status of
a measure it is necessary to know whether
or not it has passed either house or which of
the two bills has reached the more advanced
stage. In the course of business Mr.. Smith
traces these double bills, and as one Con-
gress succeeds another and OLD familiar
bills begin to pop up, he classifes them
anew under their fresh numbers. In all his
16 years of continuous, active experience he
has known only one instance in which the
same bill has come up twice under the same
number. That was bill relating to public
land in Kansas which, by remarkable
coincidence, appeared in both the Forty
first and the Forty-second Congresses as
No. Sc.
MI SUlb0 Is an luNdludDl6 dSSlSIdul 10 u
great many Senators and to most, of the COM
mittees of Congress. He is kept constantly
busy supplying documents of this and other
Congresses to pages and other messengers,
to would-be benefciaries of the Government
and to newspaper correspondents. He does
not come very much in contact with the
curiosity seeker or the casual visitor to the
Capitol. His department is one of hard
work and his room is not one of the display
features of the Capitol building. With
those with whom he does come in contact,
however, he is always genial, and the most
persistant seeker after hidden knowledge
has failed by his opportunities to drive the
smile from his lips or the pleasant word of
welcome from his tongue.
Mr.. Smith is of scholarly bearing. He is
rather spare of figure, of medium height,
with shoulders whose slight curve indicates
a life at the desk. His thin hair is gray,
and SO are his full, square-trimmed whis-
kers. He has clear-cut features with rather
prominent cheek bones, and eyes which are
set well back, usually behind pair Of gold
trimmed glasses. O'BRIEN-BAIN.
Two Policemen Married.