I found that by holding myself passive for a half hour each day, often giving five minutes to firmly fix and hold this thought in mind, within a single month I had almost ceased from using the word "forget." I also found, at other moments during the day, facts and incidents were recalled, without effort, that I especially wanted to use to assist in some business or social matter engrossing me. With all this came a delight; and it seemed that memory was furnishing logic and reason with a wealth of material to be worked over to carry out their purposes in my personal affairs.

Later on I began to direct my work to recalling particular names and faces of those known long ago; and it seemed that old friends (many long ago dead) almost visited me again. Over boy-dreams of life I went with joyousness - the visions became very real - I could not fancy myself alone - they, the former compan ions seemed present, helping me to recall a past. Who shall say they were not there?

Years ago I had made a specialty of committing poems I loved, and entire scenes from plays of Shakespeare and other dramatists, to memory. I attempted to recall some of these. Sometimes I made little progress. I have gone to three or four sittings, holding for five or ten minutes a mental picture of the scene described, and waited for words to come in perfect order, and they would not. Then, days after, when I dropped that particular task, the entire poem or dramatic scene has flashed to consciousness with hardly a single synonymous word substituted for any the author used. I now am refusing to turn back to the volumes where I could find these poems or dramas. I wait till they come back to me, simply asking memory to disclose. I have even carried this to the repeating of poems in Latin and in German which I committed in college days and have not seriously tried to recall for spaces of fully thirty years.

In all this work I beg my reader to note that I am working something like the inventor in his work-shop. Even after he may have brought out something original and secured letters patent, he usually regards that as representing only the fundamental or basic purpose of his plan.

Though an original idea is embodied, improvements may be required to make it practical.

I require more leisure than I have at present to carry my experiments to a point where from them I can fashion a method and give the world a complete working system, whereby the treasures stored in memory can be grasped as will may demand. This leisure I propose to bring to myself in due time; but prior to that, I would I might learn of hundreds working for the same ends, whether on these or other lines (for there cannot be too many students here), as this age demands that the faculty of memory be made absolutely subservient to the will.

There is a particularly delightful test and one which I hope sometime to make. This is the going into solitude, carrying with me a Greek tragedy or a Latin comedy I read in college and have never glanced at since - one, however, that I once knew well. Then, without referring to translation, grammar or lexicon, I shall ask memory to permit me to read and enjoy it again. There on the tablets of memory all is recorded. Let us find those tablets.

If, as some tell us, and as we sometimes feel, we can by true thoughts call to us spirit forces that can aid us in this task, then let us call them. Great writers, great inventors, great re formers, great statesmen have thought out their best purposes alone, or gone where they might be alone and undisturbed, that a greater intelligence or a combination of intelligences might speak to them. Longfellow clearly felt and understood that the wise caught glimpses beyond the earth's plane and delicately, yet forcibly wrote:

"Thus the seer with vision clear Sees forms appear and disappear

In the perpetual round of strange, mysterious change

From birth to death, from death to life,

From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth,

Till glimpses more sublime of things unseen before,

Unto his wondering eyes reveal The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel

Turning forever more, in the rapid and rushing river of Time."

Within one's self is the real incentive to action. May not the prompting come through subconscious vibrative force? The subconscious knows of the riches in this storehouse, and may it not urge the appropriation? May the secrets of the subconscious be its wealth gained by its intimate connection with spirit guides or with the Universal? What we know tells us of much we do not know. Shall we wait and argue against theories that may or may not be fully proven; or, shall we go forward rejoicing to learn and know, and through patient, faithful self-discipline add to our knowledge till the proofs gleaned overcome some theories, reveal others to be true, and give us a philosophy resting on the demonstrations of human experiences?

"This stored-up mental reservoir is a submerged personality which thinks, reasons, loves, fears, believes, accepts, and draws conclusions beneath and independent of consciousness." "Man, as a soul, should affirm his rule and dominion over his body as distinctly as over any other machine he uses. He should gain a positive sense that his physique is not himself, but rather his most obedient servant. As a spiritual ego he should also disconnect himself, in consciousness, from his lower or sensuous mind, while intuitively asserting his supremacy over it, and also over intellect and memory. As he rises above all inferiors, they lose their tyrannous dispositions and drop into beautiful ministry and subordination." - Henry Wood in "Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography."

Back of every effect there is a cause, and if we follow the trail to its starting point we shall find suggestion the creative protoplasm out of which it grew, be the act what it may.