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Page 75
It may be asked, how, then, is it that we do remember some names, as
those in use every day? Just as the multiplication-table is
remembered,--by force of familiarity. Constant repetition engraves them
in the mind. When in old age the vigor of the mind lessens, the
engraving wears out and names are hard to recall, since there is no
other clue to them than this engraved record.
There may be mentioned one slight help in recalling names when the case
is important or desperate. It consists in going back to the period when
the name was known and deliberately writing out a circumstantial
account of all the connected incidents, mentioning names of persons and
places whenever they can be remembered. If this is done in a casual way,
without thinking of the purpose in view,--as if one were sending a
gossipy letter of personal history to a friend,--the mind falls into an
automatic condition that may result in producing the desired name
itself. Every one must have observed that it is this automatic activity
of the mind, and not conscious effort, which recovers lost names most
successfully. We "think of them afterwards."
XENOS CLARK.
A Reminiscence of Harriet Martineau.
It is more than fifty years since I, a mere child, spent a summer with
my parents in a sandy young city of Indiana. Eight or nine hundred
souls, perhaps more, were already anchored within its borders. Chicago,
a lusty infant just over the line, her feet blackened with prairie mud,
made faces, called names, and ridiculed its soil and architecture.
Nevertheless it was a valiant little city, even though its streets were
rivers of shifting sand, through which "prairie-schooners" were
toilsomely dragged by heavy oxen or a string of chubby ponies,--these
last a gift from the coppery Indian to the country he was fast
forsaking. Clouds of clear grit drifted into open casements on every
passing breeze, or, if a gale arose, were driven through every crevice.
Our little city was cradled amid the shifting sand-hills on Michigan's
wave-beaten shore. Indeed, it had received the name of the grand old
lake in loving baptism, and was pluckily determined to wear it worthily.
Its buildings were wholly of wood, and hastily constructed, some not
entirely unpretentious, while others tilted on legs, as if in readiness
at shortest notice to take to their heels and skip away. In those early
days there was only the round yellow-bodied coach swinging on leathern
straps, or the heavy lumber-wagon, to accommodate the tide of travel
already setting westward. It was a daily delight to listen to the
inspiring toot of the driver's horn and the crack of his long whip, as,
with six steaming horses, he swung his dusty passengers in a final grand
flourish up to the hospitable door of the inn.
One memorable morning brought to the unique little town a literary
lion,--a woman of great heart, clear brain, and powerful pen,--in short,
Harriet Martineau. Her travelling companions were a professor, his
comely wife, and their eight-year-old son. The last-named was much
petted by Miss Martineau, and still flourishes in perennial youth on
many pages of her books of American travel. Michigan City felt honored
in its transient guest. The whisper that a real live author was among us
filled the inn hall with a changing throng eager to obtain a glimpse of
the celebrity. Not among the least of these were "the two little girls"
she mentions in her "Society in America," page 253. At breakfast the
party served their sharpened appetites quite like ordinary folk,--Miss
Martineau in thoughtful quiet, broken now and again by a brisk question
darted at the professor, who answered in a deliberate learned way that
was quite impressive. A shiver of disgust ruffled his plump features at
the absence of cream, which the host excused by the statement that, the
population having outgrown its flocks and herds, milk was held sacred to
the use of babes. Miss Martineau listened to the professor's complaints
with a twinkle of mirth in her eyes, while that indignant gentleman
vigorously applied himself to the solid edibles at hand. Shortly after
breakfast the strangers sallied forth in search of floral treasures,
over the low sand-hills stretching toward the lake (a spur of which
penetrated the main street), where in the face of the sandy drift
nestled a shanty quite like the "dug-out" of the timberless lands in
Kansas and New Mexico. The tomb-like structure, half buried in sand,
only its front being visible, seemed to afford Miss Martineau no end of
surprised amusement as she climbed to its submerged roof on her way to
the summit of the hill. A window-garden of tittering young women
merrily watched the progress of the quick-stepping Englishwoman, and,
really, there was some provocation to mirth, from their stand-point.
Anything approaching a _blanket_, plain, plaided, or striped, had never
disported itself before their astonished gaze as a part of feminine
apparel, except on the back of a grimy squaw. Of blanket-shawls, soon to
become a staple article of trade, the Western women had not then even
heard; and here was a civilized and cultivated creature enveloped in
what seemed to be a gay trophy wrested from the bed-furniture! Then,
too, the "only sweet thing" in bonnets was the demure "cottage,"
fashioned of fine straw, while the woman in view sported a coarse, pied
affair, whose turret-like crown and flaring brim pointed ambitiously
skyward. Stout boots completed the costume criticised and laughed over
by the merry maidens who yet stood in wholesome awe of the presence of
the wearer. With what a wealth of gorgeous wild flowers and plumy ferns
the pilgrims came laden on their return! Quoting from "Society in
America," page 253, Miss Martineau says, "The scene was like what I had
always fancied the Norway coast, but for the wild flowers, which grew
among the pines on the slope almost into the tide. I longed to spend an
entire day on this flowery and shadowy margin of the inland sea. I
plucked handfuls of pea-vine and other trailing flowers, which seemed to
run all over the ground."
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