l the people go on Sunday."

This loss of memory of names is very common with old people, but it is
not confined to them. Almost every one has at some time experienced the
peculiar, the almost desperate, feeling of trying to recall a name that
will not come. It is at our tongue's end; we know just what sort of a
name it is; it begins with a _B_; yet did we try for a year it would not
come. One curious fact about the phenomenon is that it seems to be
contagious. If one person suddenly finds himself unable to recall a
name, the person with whom he is talking will stick at it also. The name
almost always gets the best of them, and they have to say, "Yes, I know
what you mean," and go on with their talk.

I have never seen an explanation of this name-forgetfulness; but it is
not difficult to find a reason for it. What needs explaining is that
names are so obstinate, and grow more obstinate the harder we try, while
other things we have forgotten and are trying to recall generally yield
themselves to our efforts. Moreover, in other cases of forgetfulness we
never experience that peculiar and most exasperating feature of
name-forgetfulness,--the feeling that we know the word perfectly well
all the time. This last fact, indeed, seems to show that we have not
forgotten the name at all, but have simply lost the clue to it.

Now, let us inquire why this clue is so hard to find. Scientific men who
study the human mind and make a business of explaining thought, emotion,
memory, and the like, have an expression which they use frequently, and
which sounds difficult, but which really it is very easy as well as
interesting to understand. They speak of the _association of ideas_. The
association of ideas means simply the fact which every one has noticed,
that one thing tends to call up another in the mind. When you recall a
certain sleigh-ride last winter, you remember that you put hot bricks
in the sleigh; and this reminds you that you were intending to heat a
warming-pan for the bed to-night; and the thought of warming the bed
makes you think of poor President Garfield's sickness, during which they
tried to cool his room with ice. Each of these thoughts (ideas) has
evidently called up another connected--associated--with it in some way.
This is the association of ideas: it is a law that governs almost all
our thinking, as any one may discover by going back over his own
thoughts. Perhaps an easier way to discover it will be to observe t