The Greenville journal. [volume] (Greenville, Ohio) 1850-1918, 1911-02-09
PEOPLE YOU KNOW
They May Not Be Quite So Nu-
merouS as You Imagine.
GUESS AS TO THEIR NUMBER.

Then Do Some Thinking and Figuring
and See How Far From Your Guess
You Come and Incidentally Learn
How Many Folks You Don't Know.
Did you ever have the experience of
walking down Main street with a man
who Is running for Office? All the time
he is bowling right and left to people
you meet. Several times in a block he
will stop to shake hands with an ac-
Quaintance.
You seem to know every one" you
say to him almost enviously.
That's right" he replies, not with
out some pride. Il guess | do know
everybody worth knowing"
Yet how many people does he know?
How many people do you know your
self? Did you ever try to figure it out?
What proportion of the people in the
United States do you know? Certainly
you don't know the one ne-hundreth part
of them. Even the president Of the
United States doesn't and couldn't If
he kept travelling all the time, making
a host of new aCquaintances every day,
To know the one-hundredth part Of
the people in this country would be to
know in the neighbOrhOod of million
persons. No; ii is perfectly safe to say
that there is no person in the whole
world that knows Il million other per-
sons well enough to call each of them
by name. Think what a million means!
Suppose you said the names of all the
people you know as fast as you could.
If you could enunCiate twenty names
minute you would be doing marvel
ously well Even at that rate working
steadily eight hours day, it would
take you nearly four months just to
name the people you know There isn't
a memory III existence that would hold
o million names.
Well, do you suppose you know q
hundred thousand? Let's see: that
would be about one-ifth of the popu-
latiOn of Rhode Island. Imagine your
self sitting in the railroad station at
PrOviden watching the people come
through No; that is hardly fair
test. for unless you live in Providence
you do not know as many people there
as in TIE city in which you live. Sit
in your own railway station and count
the people coming through. No matter
how well known you are or how many
people you know. you cannot help but
be impressed with the fact of how
many people there are that you do not
know. If you know one in a hundred
persons you know far more than the
average.
Let us try to get at it in another
way. You make on the average. say,
two new acQuaintances a week. OF
course there are weeks and weeks that
you make no new acquaintanceS at all,
and then there are times. such as pic
mic week and vacation week and
church fair week. when you meet a
lot of people. so that two a week is
fair average. You have been meeting
people. say, for twenty-five years.
That's $500. isn't it?
Is 1t possible that you know only
$500 people? YCu thought the num-
ber would be far more than that?
But hold on. You don't know nearly
that many. There are lots and lots
Of people whom you knew twenty
years ago that you don't know now.
You cannot even remember their
names or what they looked like.
Just sit down and try to remember
the names of all the boys and girls
that were in the same room in the
public school with you. You cannot
remember half Of them or a third of
them or a fifth of them. 1t is safe to
say that of every two persons you
met in all your life you have forgotten
one. The chances are that the num-
ber Of people you know by name is
nearer 1000 than it is 1000.
OF course a preacher with thou
sand members in his church is expect
ed to know them all by name. But
all the same you will find him saying
to his wife:
my dear, who was that young lady
who spoke to us just know"
1t is business, too, for a merchant to
remember all of his thousand custom
ers, but very few merchants are able to
do it. Possibly some of the politicians
and public lecturers may know a cOu-
pie of thousand persons by name, but
very few other persons know that
many.
If this estimate seems too low it is
easily disprOved All you have to do
is to take pencil and paper and begin
putting down the names Of your ac-
quaintances. Start with your own
family and then put down your cousins
and your second cousins and your
wires relations. Then put down the
names of the people you know in the
town you used to live in and the peo-
pie you know socially. Follow that up
with the people you know in business,
then
But you can't dispute these figures.
1t is too much trouble to think of all
the people you know. You'll never do 1t.
New York World.