tents of the
show windows on the street; how many features are you able to recall?
Continual practise in this feat may develop in you as remarkable
proficiency as it did in Robert Houdin and his son.

The daily memorizing of a beautiful passage in literature will not only
lend strength to the memory, but will store the mind with gems for
quotation. But whether by little or much add daily to your memory power
by practise.

_Memorize out of doors._ The buoyancy of the wood, the shore, or the
stormy night on deserted streets may freshen your mind as it does the
minds of countless others.

Lastly, _cast out fear_. Tell yourself that you _can_ and _will_ and
_do_ remember. By pure exercise of selfism assert your mastery. Be
obsessed with the fear of forgetting and you cannot remember. Practise
the reverse. Throw aside your manuscript crutches--you may tumble once
or twice, but what matters that, for you are going to learn to walk and
leap and run.

_Memorizing a Speech_

Now let us try to put into practise the foregoing suggestions. First,
reread this chapter, noting the nine ways by which memorizing may be
helped.

Then read over the following selection from Beecher, applying so many of
the suggestions as are practicable. Get the spirit of the selection
firmly in your mind. Make mental note of--write down, if you must--the
_succession_ of ideas. Now memorize the thought. Then memorize the
outline, the order in which the different ideas are expressed. Finally,
memorize the exact wording.

No, when you have done all this, with the most faithful attention to
directions, you will not find memorizing easy, unless you have
previously trained your memory, or it is naturally retentive. Only by
constant practise will memory become strong and only by continually
observing these same principles will it remain strong. You will,
however, have made a beginning, and that is no mean matter.

_THE REIGN OF THE COMMON PEOPLE_

I do not suppose that if you were to go and look upon the
experiment of self-government in America you would have a very
high opinion of it. I have not either, if I just look upon the
surface of things. Why, men will say: "It stands to reason that
60,000,000 ignorant of law, ignorant of constitutional history,
ignorant of jurisprudence, of finance, and taxes and tariffs and
forms of currency--60,000,000 people that never studied these
things--are not fit to rule." Yo