OCR Text |
Show A FEAT Of MEMOnY. Wonderful Accomplishment to Which the Mind W.e Trained. , Somo light li thrown on tho possibilities possi-bilities of memory culturo by an inter-estlig inter-estlig recital contained In the autobiography auto-biography of Itobert Houdln, tho famous conjurer. Ho taught his son to glance at, say, a shop window and to memorize accurately, as in a brain picture, the window's contents. Then he would ask him to describe the contents, con-tents, checking and correcting him as he went on. On one occasion Houdln was commanded to the Tullerles to giro a performance before the French court As he passed through an anteroom ante-room tWhe salon he bade his son to note the arrangement ot the rooms and the contents of tho bookcases. Then at the close of the entertainment entertain-ment Houdln astonished his audlonco by giving what ho called a "second-sight" "second-sight" test. Declaring his unfamll-iarlty unfamll-iarlty with the Tulllorles, Houdln, blindfolding his son, asked him to send his gaze through tho wall of the room to tho chamber beyond, to describe de-scribe the arrangement of the chamber cham-ber and to read tho titles of the volumes vol-umes on the shelves of tho bookcases. This feat the young lad accomplished, to tho astonishment, of tho court |