ay for ten days. Then
compare results.

_c._ Make a practice of recounting each night the incidents of the day.
The prospect of having this to do will cause you unconsciously to
observe more attentively.

This is the method by which Thurlow Weed acquired his phenomenal memory.
As a young man with political ambitions he had been much troubled by
his inability to recall names and faces. So he began the practice each
night of telling his wife the most minute details of incidents that had
occurred during the day. He kept this up for fifty years, and it so
trained his powers of observation that he became as well known for his
unfailing memory as for his political adroitness.

_d._ Glance once at an outline map of some State. Put it out of sight
and draw one as nearly like it as you can. Then compare it with the
original. Do this frequently.

[Sidenote: _Invention and Thought-Memory_]

_e._ Have some one read you a sentence out of a book and you then repeat
it. Do this daily, gradually increasing the length of the quotation from
short sentences to whole paragraphs. Try to find out what is the
extreme limit of your ability in this respect compared with that of
other members of your family.

Rule II. _Fix ideas by their associates._

There are other things to be remembered besides facts of outside
observation. You are not one whose life is passed entirely in a physical
world. You live also within. Your mind is unceasingly at work with the
materials of the past painting the pictures of the future. You are
called upon to scheme, to plan, to devise, to invent, to compose and to
foresee.

If all this mental work is not wasted energy, you must be able to recall
its conclusions when occasion requires. A happy thought comes to
you--will you remember it tomorrow when the hour for action arrives?
There is but one way to be sure, and that is by making a study of the
whole associative mental process.

Review the train of ideas by which you reached your conclusion. Carry
the thought on in mind to its legitimate conclusion. See yourself acting
upon it. Mark its relations to other persons. Note all the details of
the mental picture. In other words, to remember thoughts, cultivate
thought-observation just as you cultivate sense-observation to remember
outside matters.

[Sidenote: _Three Exercises for Developing Thought-Memory_]

To train yourself in thought-memory, use the following exercises:

_a._ Every morning at eight o'