increase the
fighting-effectiveness of a man-of-war? One vital way would be to
increase the size and number of its guns. To strengthen your memory,
increase both the number and the force of your mental impressions by
attending to them intensely. Loose, skimming reading, and drifting
habits of reading destroy memory power. However, as most books and
newspapers do not warrant any other kind of attention, it will not do
altogether to condemn this method of reading; but avoid it when you are
trying to memorize.

Environment has a strong influence upon concentration, until you have
learned to be alone in a crowd and undisturbed by clamor. When you set
out to memorize a fact or a speech, you may find the task easier away
from all sounds and moving objects. All impressions foreign to the one
you desire to fix in your mind must be eliminated.

The next great step in memorizing is to _pick out the essentials of the
subject_, arrange them in order, and dwell upon them intently. Think
clearly of each essential, one after the other. _Thinking_ a thing--not
allowing the mind to wander to non-essentials--is really memorizing.

_Association of ideas_ is universally recognized as an essential in
memory work; indeed, whole systems of memory training have been founded
on this principle.

Many speakers memorize only the outlines of their addresses, filling in
the words at the moment of speaking. Some have found it helpful to
remember an outline by associating the different points with objects in
the room. Speaking on "Peace," you may wish to dwell on the cost the
cruelty, and the failure of war, and so lead to the justice of
arbitration. Before going on the platform if you will associate four
divisions of your outline with four objects in the room, this
association may help you to recall them. You may be prone to forget your
third point, but you remember that once when you were speaking the
electric lights failed, so arbitrarily the electric light globe will
help you to remember "failure." Such associations, being unique, tend to
stick in the mind. While recently speaking on the six kinds of
imagination the present writer formed them into an acrostic--_visual_,
_auditory_, _motor_, _gustatory_, _olfactory_, and _tactile_, furnished
the nonsense word _vamgot_, but the six points were easily remembered.

In the same way that children are taught to remember the spelling of
teasing words--_separate_ comes from _separ_--and as an automob