Dripread - Book

down to the final irreducible sediment:
"Magna Charta was exacted by the barons from King John at Runnymede."

You must now turn this statement this way and that way; asking yourself
about it every possible and impossible question, gravely considering the
answers, and, if you find any part of it especially difficult to
remember, chaining it to the question which will bring it out. Thus,
"What was exacted by the barons from King John at Runnymede?" "Magna
Charta." "By whom was Magna Charta exacted from King John at Runnymede?"
"By the barons." "From whom was," etc., etc.? "King John." "From what
king," etc., etc.? "King John." "Where was Magna Charta," etc., etc.?
"At Runnymede."

And so on and so on, as long as your ingenuity can suggest questions to
ask, or points of view from which to consider the statement. Your mind
will be finally saturated with the information, and prepared to spill it
out at the first squeeze of the examiner. This, however, is not new. It
was taught in the schools hundreds of years before Loisette was born.
Old newspaper men will recall in connection with it Horace Greeley's
statement that the test of a news item was the clear and satisfactory
manner in which a report answered the interrogatories, "What?" "When?"
"Where?" "Who?" "Why?"

In the same way Loisette advises the learning of poetry, e. g.:

"The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold."

"Who came down?"

"How did the Assyian come down?"

"Like what animal did?" etc.

And so on and so on, until the verses are exhausted of every scrap of
information to be had out of them by the most assiduous
cross-examination.

Whatever the reader may think of the availability or value of this part
of the system, there are so many easily applicable tests of the worth of
much that Loisette has done, that it may be taken with the rest.

Few people, to give an easy example, can remember the value of the ratio
between the circumference and the diameter of the circle beyond four
places of decimals, or at most six--3.141592. Here is the value to 108
decimal places:

3.14159265.3589793238.4626433832.7950288419.7169399375.1058209749.-
4459230781.6406286208.9986280348.2534211706.7982148086 plus.

By a very simple application of the numerical letter values these 108
decimal places can be carried in the mind and recalled about as fast as
you can write them down. All that is to be done is to memorize these
nonsense lines:

Mother Day will buy any shawl.
My love pick up my new muff.
A Russian jeer may move a woman.
Cables enough for Utopia.
Get a cheap ham pie by my cooley.
The slave knows a bigger ape.
I rarely hop on my sick foot.
Cheer a sage in a fashion safe.
A baby fish now views my wharf.
Annually Mary Ann did kiss a jay,
A cabby found a rough savage.

Now translate each significant into its proper value and you have the
task accomplished. "Mother Day," m--3, th--l, r--4, d--l, and so on.
Learn the lines one at a time by the method of interrogatories. "Who
will buy any shawl?" "Which Mrs. Day will buy a shawl?" "Is Mother Day
particular about the sort of shawl she will buy?" "Has she bought a
shawl?" etc., etc. Then cement the end of each line to the beginning of
the next one, thus, "Shawl"--"warm garment"--"warmth"--"love"--"my
love," and go on as before. Stupid as the work may seem to you, you can
memorize the figures in fifteen minutes this way so that you will not
forget them in fifteen years. Similarly you can take Haydn's Dictionary
of Dates and turn fact after fact into nonsense lines like these which
you cannot lose.

And this ought to be enough to show anybody the whole art. If you look
back across the sands of time and find out that it is that ridiculous
old "Thirty days hath September" which comes to you when you are trying
to think of the length of October--if you can quote your old prosody,

� "O datur ambiguis," etc.,

with much more certainty than you can serve up your Horace; if, in fine,
jingles and alliterations, wise and otherwise, have stayed with you,
while solid and serviceable information has faded away, you may be
certain that here is the key to the enigma of memory.

You can apply it yourself in a hundred ways. If you wish to clinch in
your mind the fact that Mr. Love lives at 485 Dearborn Street, what is
more easy than to turn 485 into the word "rifle" and chain the ideas
together, say thus: "Love--happiness--good time--
picnic--forest--wood--rangers--range--rifle range--rifle fine
weapon--costly weapon--dearly

The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing / A Manual of Ready Reference