How to Cure a Bad Memory.
Your memory perhaps is bad, but I can tell you two secrets that will cure the worst memory. One is to read a subject when strongly interested. The other is, to not only read, but think. When you have read a paragraph or a page, stop, close the book, and try to remember the ideas on that page, and not only recall them vaguely in your mind, but put them into words and speak them out. Faithfully follow these two rules, and you have the golden keys of knowledge. Besides inattentive reading, there are other things injurious to memory. One is the habit of skimming over newspapers, items of news, smart remarks, bits of information, political reflections, fashion notes, all in a confused jumble, never to be thought of again, thus diligently cultivating a habit of careless reading, hard to break. Another is the reading of trashy novels. Nothing is so fatal to reading with profit as the habit of running through story after story, and forgetting them as soon as read. I know a gray haired woman, a life-long lover of books, who sadly declares that her mind has been ruined by such reading. A help to memory is repetition.—St. Nicholas.