Page:Memory; how to develop, train, and use it - Atkinson - 1919.djvu/143

Rh of anyone who practices them. The whole thing depends upon the “taking notice” and using the attention, and those things in turn depend upon the taking of interest in the subject. If anyone will “wake up and take interest” in the subject of locality and direction he may develop himself along the lines of place-memory to an almost incredible degree, in a comparatively short time at that. There is no other phase of memory that so quickly responds to use and exercise as this one. We have in mind a lady who was notoriously deficient in the memory of place, and was sure to lose herself a few blocks from her stopping place, wherever she might be. She seemed absolutely devoid of the sense of direction or locality and often lost herself in the hotel corridors, notwithstanding the fact that she traveled all over the world, with her husband, for years. The trouble undoubtedly arose from the fact that she depended altogether upon her husband as a pilot, the couple being inseparable. Well, the husband died, and the lady lost her pilot. Instead of giving up in despair, she began to rise to the occasion—having no pilot, she had to pilot herself. And