The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-03-31
SOME FAMOUS MEMORIES.
POLITICIANS GREAT ON NAMES
 AND "A CES.
Stanton's Wecitntions From Dickens
 Reeds Speciality In Horace.

Retentive memory is to be prize'
 above rubies. yet many men hay
 achieved phenomenal success in spite O. memories abnormally poor-at least, ir
 some directions. The late pr. McCosh of Princeton, must have had memory highly cultivated in some ways, but fol the life of him he couldn't remember faces, and on numberless occasions ht caused no end of modification to him self and others by failure to recognize persons with whom he had been on terms of close intimacy for years. Il has been said of the good doctor that his inability to remember names and faces would have prevented him from making a success in political life, but : that doesn't follow. Many public mer have possessed almost perfect memory of names and faces, and this was true ol James G. Blaine, but other prominent men have managed to get along pretty well without that faculty.
 Conkling, for instance, forgot names and faces often. He had wonderful memory, though, as his opponents often discovered when, speaking publicly, he recalled utterances of theirs they would fain forget. Nor was his memory con- fined to political matters. It was stored abundantly with poetry not fragmentary lines or brief stanzas, but entire epics, page by page. He could repeat nearly the whole of Moore s "Lally Rookh" and Scott's Lady Of the Lake" These were his favorite po- ems but the odes of Horace, in the original, were almost equally familiar to him, and he often amazed his few in inmates by reciting the Latin poets lines by the hundred, with perfect into nation and superb elocution, while he knew by heart the first book of Homer's "Odyssey," Bryant's translation.
 It is an interesting coincidence that Thomas Bracket Reed, who has gone to practicing law in this city, after devot- ing most of his life to the public ser vice, thus following Conkling's foot steps, is also able to recite Horace at great length. MT. Reed has memorized long stretches of the odes in transla- tion as well as in the original. His lik- ing for them has led to his making collection of translatiofls in English and French When he has for an auditor an enthusiastic admirer of Horace, who understands Latin he delights to quote various versions of special passages by Sthe half-hour, sometimes commenting thereon in a way that shows complete mastery of the subject. Reeds memo Tizing is not confined to the old-time classics, either; he knows the work of some of our native poets, and delights in nothing more than reciting such bits as the production by "Ironquill," begin- ming:
 Once a Kansas zephyr strayed
 Where a brass-eyed bird pup played.
 Besides, he memories prose with re- markable facility, and almost without effort. Thus he can recite long passages from Dickens and Thackeray, especial the latter. To hear him repeat the
 ,ssrage descriptive of the meeting be-
 tha Lord Steyne and Rawdon Craw- )nH%S '.Vanity Fair is said to be as good asS to see the dramatzed version enacted. SThe late Edwin M. Stanton, President Lincoln's secretary of war. astonshed Charles Dickens at dinner party given to the novelist at Charles Summers house by recitirg, on sugges- ton, chapter after chapter of his works. It didn't matter what chapter of what Nstory the author called for, Stanton could give the text from memory, al most letter perfect. Tn answer to the amazed Englishman's query, the war secretary said he had done the memo- Tizing almost unconsciously. While the war was on he had found it almost m- possible to forget for a moment the heavy burden he was bearing, and had frightened the pressure regularly at night by reading something from Dick ems before trying to sleep. One night, not having a volume of Dickens handy he had sought to recall a few random passages, when, to his delight, chapter after chapter came to him.
 Concerning MT. Reed, it may be added that though he can memorize literary gems without effort, he is incapable of remembering the correct spelling of words. Having written an article for a certain newspaper, he was mortified on seeing the journal, for the editor had caused part of the manuscript to be engraved, and had printed facsimile of the first page. Reeds fear that he had misspelled lot of words was acute, and he didn't breathe easily till friend had gone over the facsimile carefully | and found no errors.
 Entirely different from the memory that assimilates literature is that which stores away chronological facts. Sam uel J. Tilden had such a memory, and | his use of it on one occasion was herald | ed far and wide in the newspapers. It | was at Horace Greelys funeral. Gree | ley and Tilden were defeated candi- dates for the presidency, and this | moved Tilden to speak of the circum- | stances attending the death of the pres idents. Beginning with Washiugton's, he gave the date of each, with all the ! accompanying incidents.
 MT. Tilden's chronological memory | was not marker. though to that of | Daniel Mccartney. His memory reached it's full power when he was about sixteen and lasted till his death at seventy He could tell what hap pened to him OH any given day of the entire elapsed period of fifty-four years He remembered what the weather had been, what he had eaten at each meal, and many other things most of us for get Statements concerning his own personal life could not be verified, of l