I find it very hard to believe that the memory of the poor old gentleman is a bit the better for all this torture except in respect of the particular facts thus wrought into it, and other matters that may have been connected therewithal. =Improving the Memory.=--All improvement of memory consists, then, in the improvement of one's _habitual methods of recording facts_. Methods have been divided into the mechanical, the ingenious, and the judicious. The _mechanical methods_ consist in the intensification, prolongation, and _repetition_ of the impression to be remembered. The modern method of teaching children to read by blackboard work, in which each word is impressed by the fourfold channel of eye, ear, voice, and hand, is an example of an improved mechanical method of memorizing. _Judicious methods_ of remembering things are nothing but logical ways of conceiving them and working them into rational systems, classifying them, analyzing them into parts, etc., etc. All the sciences are such methods. Of _ingenious methods_ many have been invented, under the name of technical memories. By means of these systems it is often possible to retain entirely disconnected facts, lists of names, numbers, and so forth, so multitudinous as to be entirely unrememberable in a natural way. The method consists usually in a framework learned mechanically, of which the mind is supposed to remain in secure and permanent possession. Then, whatever is to be remembered is deliberately associated by some fanciful analogy or connection with some part of this framework, and this connection thenceforward helps its recall. The best known and most used of these devices is the figure-alphabet. To remember numbers, e.g., a figure-alphabet is first formed, in which each numerical digit is represented by one or more letters. The number is then translated into such letters as will best make a word, if possible a word suggestive of the object to which the number belongs. The word will then be remembered when the numbers alone might be forgotten.[38] The recent system of Loisette is a method, much less mechanical, of weaving the thing into associations which may aid its recall.