engaged
in an argument upon which vast issues depended he suddenly realized
that he had forgotten to guard a most important point. In that hour of
excitement his faculties became greatly stimulated. Decisions,
authorities and precedents long since forgotten began to return to his
mind. Dimly outlined at first, they slowly grew plain, until at length
he read them with perfect distinctness. Mr. Beecher had a similar
experience when he fronted the mob in Liverpool. He said that all
events, arguments and appeals that he had ever heard or read or
written passed before his mind as oratorical weapons, and standing
there he had but to reach forth his hand and seize the weapons as they
went smoking by. All public men have had similar experiences--witness
the testimony of Pitt, Burke and Wendell Phillips. But what event has
such power to restore the records of memory as that secret excitement
when the soul is like an ambassador returned home from a foreign
mission to report before the throne of God? Thus, giving in its
account, what sacred stimulus will fall upon memory!

In every age poets and philosophers have made much of associations as
a restorer of dim memories. Porter has a story of a dinner party in
which a reference to Benedict Arnold was immediately followed by
someone asking the value of the Roman denarius. Reflection shows that
the question was directly suggested by the topic under discussion.
Benedict Arnold suggested Judas Iscariot and the thirty pieces of
silver given him, and therefore the value of the coin which he
received as reward. Similarly there is a tradition that Peter's face
was clouded with sorrow whenever he heard the crowing of a cock.
Bulwer Lytton represents Eugene Aram as scarcely able to restrain a
scream of agony when a friend chanced to drive in near the spot where
in murderous hate he had struck a fatal blow.

Thus, no sin is ever buried, save as a murderer buries his victim
under a layer of thin sand. But let him pass that way, and a skeleton
arm starts up and points to heaven and to the evil doer. The
philosopher affirms that the "memory of the past can never perish
until the tree or the river or the sea" with which the dark memory is
associated has been blotted out of existence. Thus, the law of
association ever works to bring back the ghastly phantom, to chill the
blood and sear the brain. Nothing is ever forgotten. One touch, one
sight, one sound, the murmur of the stream, the sound of a