_e._ Have some one read you a sentence out of a book and you then repeat
it. Do this daily, gradually increasing the length of the quotation from
short sentences to whole paragraphs. Try to find out what is the
extreme limit of your ability in this respect compared with that of
other members of your family.


Rule II. _Fix ideas by their associates._

There are other things to be remembered besides facts of outside
observation. You are not one whose life is passed entirely in a physical
world. You live also within. Your mind is unceasingly at work with the
materials of the past painting the pictures of the future. You are
called upon to scheme, to plan, to devise, to invent, to compose and to
foresee.

If all this mental work is not wasted energy, you must be able to recall
its conclusions when occasion requires. A happy thought comes to
you--will you remember it tomorrow when the hour for action arrives?
There is but one way to be sure, and that is by making a study of the
whole associative mental process.

Review the train of ideas by which you reached your conclusion. Carry
the thought on in mind to its legitimate conclusion. See yourself acting
upon it. Mark its relations to other persons. Note all the details of
the mental picture. In other words, to remember thoughts, cultivate
thought-observation just as you cultivate sense-observation to remember
outside matters.

[Sidenote: _Three Exercises for Developing Thought-Memory_]