ian come down?"

"Like what animal did?" etc.

And so on and so on, until the verses are exhausted of every scrap of
information to be had out of them by the most assiduous cross-examination.

Whatever the reader may think of the availability or value of this part
of the system, there are so many easily applicable tests of the worth
of much that Loisette has done, that it may be taken with the rest.

Few people, to give an easy example, can remember the value of +-- the
ratio between the circumference and the diameter of the circle--beyond
four places of decimals, or at most six--3,141,592+. Here is the value
to 108 decimal places:

3. 14159265.3589793238.4626433832.7950288419.7169399375.1058209749.
4459230781.6406286208.9986280348.2534211706.79 82148086

By a very simple application of the numerical letter values these 108
decimal places can be carried in the mind and recalled about as fast as
you can write them down. All that is to be done is to memorize these
nonsense lines:

Mother Day will buy any shawl.
My love pick up my new muff.
A Russian jeer may move a woman.
Cables enough for Utopia.
Get a cheap ham pie by my cooley.
The slave knows a bigger ape.
I rarely hop on my sick foot.
Cheer a sage in a fashion safe.
A baby fish now views my wharf.
Annually Mary Ann did kiss a jay.
A cabby found a rough savage.

Now translate each significant into its proper value and you have the
task accomplished. "Mother Day," _m_ equals 3, _th_ equals 1, _r_
equals 4, _d_ equals 1, and so on. Learn the lines one at a time by the
method of interrogatories. "Who will buy any shawl?" "Which Mrs. Day
will buy a shawl?" "Is Mother Day particular about the sort of shawl
she will buy?" "Has she bought a shawl?" etc., etc. Then cement the end
of each line to the beginning of the next one, thus, "Shawl"--"warm
garment"--"warmth"--"love"--"my love," and go on as before. Stupid as
the work may seem to you, you can memorize the figures in fifteen
minutes this way so that you will not forget them in fifteen years.
Similarly you can take Haydn's Dictionary of Dates and turn fact after
fact into nonsense lines like these which you cannot lose.

And this ought to be enough to show anybody the whole art. If you look
back across the sands of time and find out that it is that ridiculous
old "Thirty days hath September," which comes to you when you are
trying to think of the length of October