more than twelve years of age I became a vegetarian
and for nine years lived the life pretty rigorously. I have always
believed that simpler, plainer living than most of us indulge in, more
open air life, sleeping, working, living out of doors, more active,
physical exercise of a useful character, would be beneficial. Then I
became a student of memory culture. Professor William Stokes of
the Royal Polytechnic Institution became my friend, and for years
I studied his system of Mnemonics, or as it was generally termed
"Artificial Memory." Then I taught it for a number of years, and
evolved from it certain fundamental principles upon which I have
largely based the cultivation of my own memory and mentality, and for
which I can never be sufficiently thankful. Then I desired to be a
public speaker. I became a "hobbyist" on pronunciation, enunciation,
purity of voice, phrasing and getting the thought of my own mind in
the best and quickest possible way into the minds of others. For years
I kept a small book in which I jotted down every word, its derivation
and full meaning with which I was not familiar. I studied clear
enunciation by the hour; indeed as I walked through the streets I
recited to myself, aloud, so that I could hear my own enunciation,
such poems as Southey's _Cataract of Lodore_, where almost every word
terminates in "ing." For I had heard many great English and American
speakers whose failure to pronounce this terminal "ing" in such
words as coming, going, etc., used to distress me considerably. Other
exercises were the catches, such as "Peter Piper picks a peck of
pickled peppers," or "Selina Seamstich stitches seven seams slowly,
surely, serenely and slovenly," or "Around a rugged rock a ragged
rascal ran a rural race." Then, too, Professor Stokes had composed a
wonderful yarn about the memory, entitled "My M-made memory medley,
mentioning memory's most marvelous manifestations." This took up as
much as three or four pages of this book, every word beginning with m.
It was a marvelous exercise for lingual development. He also had
"The Far-Famed Fairy Tale of Fenella," and these were constantly
and continuously recited, with scrupulous care as to enunciation. My
father was an old-time conductor of choral and oratorio societies, and
was the leader of a large choir. I had a good alto voice and under his
wise dicipline it was cultivated, and I was a certificated reader of
music at sight before I was ten years old