Part 1

Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Laura Wisewell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE | | | | In this plain text version, small capitals have been | | rendered as ALL CAPS, bold using =equals signs= and italics | | usually using underscores. However, the original used | | italics to highlight certain letters within words where | | these were intended to help with remembering numbers and | | dates according to the "Analytic substitution" memory | | method. For legibility, these have been rendered using | | {c}u{rl}y {br}ac{k}e{ts}. | | | | Some of the numbered lists were originally wrapped together | | as a paragraph; for legibility some of these have been | | changed to separate lines. This applies particularly to the | | lists of questions: these blocks were originally placed like | | footnotes at the bottom of pages, but here have been moved | | to an appropriate break in the main text. | | | | Some obvious printer errors have been corrected, full | | details of which can be found in the HTML version of this | | eBook. The inconsistent hyphenation of several words, and | | inconsistent use of -ise and -ize spellings, has been left | | as in the original. | | | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

(MARCUS DWIGHT LARROWE)]

ASSIMILATIVE MEMORY

HOW TO ATTEND AND NEVER FORGET

PROF. A. LOISETTE

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY NEW YORK AND LONDON 1899

COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY IDA M. LARROWE-LOISETTE

All Rights Reserved

ENTERED AT STATIONER'S HALL, 1896. All Rights Reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

PREFACE.

Prof. A. Loisette wishes to call the attention of those who are now for the first time becoming acquainted with his System of Memory Training, that he was the first teacher of a Memory System to announce and to insist that Memory is not a separate faculty whose office it is to carry the recollective burdens of the other faculties--but that Memory is a Physiological and Psychological property of each mental act, and that such act retains the traces and history of its own action, and that there are as many memories as there are kinds of mental action, and that, therefore, Memory is always concrete, although, for convenience sake, we do speak of it in the abstract, and that consequently all Memory improvement means improvement of the Action or Manner of action of the Mental powers, and that what he imparts is the right way to USE the Intellect and Attention--and that hence his System does make and must make better observers, clearer and more consecutive thinkers, and sounder reasoners as well as surer rememberers; that in short the fundamental principle of his System is Learn by Thinking, and that his achievements as a mind-trainer are completed when he has helped the student of his System to acquire the Habit of Attention and the Habit of Thinking on that to which he is attending on all occasions, which two Habits combined constitute the Habit of Assimilation, and that when this Habit of Assimilation is thus established in the pupil's mind, the System as such is no longer consciously used.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

1--FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF ASSIMILATIVE MEMORY. 1

2--BRAIN TONIC; or, The stimulating Power of the Method. 6

3--Educating the Intellect to stay with the senses of Sight and Hearing; or, Cure of Mind Wandering. 15

4--Learning any Series of Proper Names--American Presidents. 25

5--The Unique Case of the English Sovereigns--How to learn their Succession quickly. 31

6--NUMERIC THINKING; or, Learning the longest sets of figures almost instantly. 38

7--DECOMPOSITION OR RECOMPOSITION, AND INTELLECTUAL INQUISITION; or, How to learn Prose and Poetry by heart, with numerous examples, including Poe's Bells. 47

8--ANALYTIC SUBSTITUTIONS; or, A Quick Training in Dates, etc., Dates of the Accession of American Presidents and of the English Kings, Specific Gravities, Rivers, Mountains, Latitudes and Longitudes, etc. 66

9--THOUGHTIVE UNIFICATIONS; or, How to never forget Proper Names, Series of Facts, Faces, Errands, Conversations, Speeches or Lectures, Languages, Foreign Vocabularies, Music, Mathematics, etc., Speaking without notes, Anatomy, and all other Memory wants. 109

10--ACME OF ACQUISITION; or, Learning unconnected facts, rules and principles in the Arts, Sciences, Histories, etc., etc., chapters in books, or books themselves, in one reading or study. 149

11--Learning one hundred facts in the Victorian Era, with dates of year, month, and day of each in one thoughtive perusal. 159

ASSIMILATIVE MEMORY.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES.