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Acknowledgments - I wish to acknowledge with thanks my indebtedness to Mrs. Hortense Dillon, Mr. Samuel Ebenstein, Mrs. Virginia E. Flynn, Mr. Lawrence Scheewe and Mr. Edwin C. Silvey for their friendly assistance in gathering the material for this work. Also to Miss Elinore Denniston and Miss Lorna Dietz for help in putting it into its present form.

01. Goal Ahead - You are reading this book because you wish to develop all the potentialities of your mind, to acquire greater mental power, an increased ability to concentrate, more self-confidence. You have found that your memory is not reliable and you want to improve it.

After teaching courses in memory retention for a number of years, I have discovered that its study, far from being a matter of drudgery, can be made not only unexpectedly interesting but as entertaining as a parlor game.

02. Memory Rudiments - Every outstanding man in the field of sports has a trainer, whether he be boxer, swimmer, or distance runner. Every day, however, you can see in sports arenas young men who attempt to compete without the advice of a trainer or a manager. The winner, they would probably tell you, is merely the man whose legs work the fastest, and that is all there is to it; aside from this, there is little to know about foot racing.

03. Individual Methods - One day the students in Privy Councilor von Liszt's seminar in criminal law were startled when two students suddenly became embroiled in an argument which disrupted the sleepy quiet of the room, and rapidly developed into a violent quarrel, coming to blows. Before the horrified eyes of the students one of the two drew a revolver from his pocket and shot his opponent.

04. Remember Places - Up to this point we have studied only the functioning of the memory. Now let us turn to the various objects which we wish to remember.

When you are in a circle of intimate friends, turn the conversation on the subject of memory. You will be amazed at the conclusions drawn by the various individuals about their own memories.

05. Concentration - The memory has no enemy greater than lack of concentration. To go back to the story of the three travelers who made a trip together and then told what they had seen on their journey, it is apparent that the things they recalled were those on which they had concentrated their attention. From the preceding chapters you have learned also that the ability to concentrate is important in every effort of memory.

06. Association Of Ideas - A short time ago I read that almost 48 million people had visited the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940. As I was reading, someone telephoned and asked me to send him some literature about my memory classes. He gave his address as 365 West 52nd Street.

07. Chain Method - We have seen that the pictorial association of ideas fails when it comes to abstract ideas. Of course, it fails grievously when it is no longer a question of nouns but of qualifying adjectives. The concepts "hot" and "eager" can be expressed visually only indirectly through nouns to which they are related so closely that to recall the one is to recall the other.

08. Classification - Classified material is easier to remember than is unclassified material. This statement is so obvious that one would assume everyone knows it. A writer, we should suppose, in preparing a book for publication organizes his material as logically as possible, just as a student bent on studying brings his material into some sort of order. A glance at our literature, however, and a few questions put to students or apprentices show that this theoretical recognition of a trite statement is not actually carried out in practice.

09. Foreign Languages - Ever since people began to engage in trade and commerce and thereby to come into contact with foreigners, they have had to learn the language of the country with which they wished to do business. Because acquiring a foreign language is one of the oldest branches of knowledge, one would think that during the many years which have passed a method could have been found for making the study-process easier and the learning-process more effective. In reality, however, only the last few decades have produced a small number of volumes based on a truly rational method. Most textbooks still prefer to follow the tradition sanctified by long usage.

10. The States - Our next problem is to learn how to master names which are especially difficult to remember and for which we cannot easily find meaningful words of similar sound. How shall we set about memorizing, by a simple method, a rather long, collective series of difficult names? As a concrete example, let us take the forty-eight states of our country.

11. Presidents - Every American should know the names of the Presidents, but our task becomes more involved when we attempt to remember names in a definite, unchangeable order. The. little stories in the preceding chapter illustrated how much easier the task of memorizing is when we are completely free in using our substituting words in a composition. In learning the Presidents of the United States we have no such freedom, for in this case a serial order is the most important factor. While this restriction makes composition of the story a little more difficult, it does not affect the system itself.

12. Remember Names - The lack of a reliable memory for names and faces is extremely annoying. A person whose memory for faces deserts him is often unpopular, for everyone is hurt at not being recognized. Not only will he be mortified and find himself in an awkward position, but he may even suffer financially as well.

13. Your Living - Without turning back, repeat the series beginning with the word school and ending with the word book. You can still repeat this series by heart, provided you supplied your own association-laws at the time and did not restrict yourself to those I suggested. If you make an honest effort you will find that you can repeat the series backward, too; that is, begin with the word book and end with the word school.

14. Numerical Codes - Most people find it extremely difficult to remember figures, although it is necessary to do so in every phase of modern life. Not only in school and college but in everyday life a great deal of time is spent in the tedious task of impressing abstract numbers on our memories.

15. Practical Application - I assume that before continuing you will have memorized the numerical code so well that you can substitute numbers for every word you hear or read. But we must remember we did not learn the numerical code in order to express words in numbers, but for the reverse purpose: to remember numbers through words. Everything that has been done up to this point was with this goal in mind.

16. Key Words - This subject is one of the most important in the whole study of mnemotechny. As we stated at the end of Chapter XIII, a weakness of the hook method, as far as using furniture as hooks is concerned, is that the series goes only to 10 and we run the risk of getting mixed up if we try to extend it. I promised we could overcome this weakness by using the numerical code, and we will now proceed to do so.

17. Daily Schedule - Among the hundreds of uses to which the basic series of key words may be put is its employment in adhering to a schedule for a specific day. Let us suppose that you start your day at eight o'clock in the morning and that you have . the following things to do, each of them at a specified hour:

18. Remembering Numbers - If you have had trouble in mastering the system winch I have outlined up to this point, you can skip this chapter. But if you find it easy to form associations and have practised it to some degree, you will find it worth while to learn this method of remembering larger numbers.

19. Playing Cards - If we wish to apply our system to playing cards without extra effort, we can associate the cards with our basic list of words. Before you read my suggestions on how to go about it, try to find a solution yourself. Since this idea may seem a little odd to you, here is the reason why you should.

20. Connecting Persons - In chapter XII, in reference to another subject, I stressed the importance of remembering certain facts, statements, or questions in connection with a group of persons. As examples of this contingency in everyday life, let me cite the instance of a speaker who finds it necessary to answer in his finishing remarks, after a debate, statements or questions raised during the discussion.

21. Economizing Time - "Couldn't these dots and dashes be arranged in a simple, methodical way instead of being so hit-and-miss?"

This is the constant complaint of the thousands of would-be telegraphers and radio operators who are studying the International Morse Code. It is the complaint, too, of persons who plan to use the code for signalling, sending messages by heliograph, and operating other communication facilities.

22. Mnemotechnical Games - You can now repeat without error a series of 100 or 200 words and figures after having heard them once, and you can also effortlessly call any chosen word or number out of its proper order. In addition, you have read short summaries of several cases showing practical application in all sorts of fields of study and in everyday life.

23. Dates - Occasionally in everyday life it is necessary to remember not only a certain year but even a specific date. In such instances, however, we can assume that the century is always so well-known that it need not be recalled. If a certain day is so important that you want to keep the exact date in mind, you can hardly be in doubt about the century to which it belongs.

24. Public Speaking - After these little mnemotechnical games we turn again to the sober realities of life. There are few things more important for the practical man of affairs than the ability to make a speech to a large gathering of his fellows.

You know from your own experience that people with the so-called gift of speech usually are leaders in their clubs and lodges and, most important of all, in business gatherings.

25. Preparing - A method for delivering a speech extemporaneously, without a manuscript, is of little use to those of my readers who do not know how to set about preparing the speech. That, too, must be studied. As preparing the speech is a necessary preliminary to delivering it in public, I shall give a few simple suggestions for guidance.

26. Introduction - If i devote an entire section to the introduction and the conclusion of a lecture, it is because these two sections are so often neglected.

First of all, the introduction and the conclusion must be related to the main theme in the matter of time. In the usual 45- to 60-minute lecture,, the introduction should not take more than about three minutes, and the conclusion perhaps five minutes.

27. Practical Example - As an illustration of what an actual cue sheet looks like, I have chosen Chapter XXV of this book, the chapter on "Preparing Public Addresses." The cue sheet for this section might read as follows:

28. Varied Vocabulary - The speaker who is able to express himself without using hackneyed phrases, and who can inject color into his talk by means of a variety of images and a well-rounded vocabulary, can feel fairly sure of holding the attention of his audience, for it will not become apathetic from the boring conviction of knowing what is coming next.

29. Stage Fright - Even complete mastery of one's subject and the finest delivery cannot assist the speaker overcome with stage fright.

By "stage fright" we mean the condition of unreasoning terror that assails certain speakers, actors or singers shortly before they are to appear before a gathering of people. This affliction is particularly awkward if, instead of disappearing during the course of the performance, it remains present or even grows more pronounced.

THE END