Written in 1888 and published in 1891, this book tells how to cultivate your memory through the use of the three A's. They are; Attention, Association, and Arrangement.
Excerpt:
.....There seem to be different kinds of memory, so to speak. One person can remember words, another numbers, another places, another never forgets a face. These different kinds of memory depend partly on natural ability, partly on training. Knowledge of this kind is mostly kept as long as it is wanted and then thrown over. Illiterate people are sometimes so thrown upon the resources of their memory that, from exercise, this becomes extraordinarily powerful.
.....The way in which memory is strengthened by habit is, I think, well illustrated by the following anecdote, trivial as it is in itself. A country postman once told me he was in the habit of getting an occasional lift in a butcher's cart, and then saved the butcher's man trouble by taking orders for him at houses that lay off the road. When several things were ordered, he had some difficulty in keeping them exactly right in his head till he rejoined his friend; but the butcher took not only these orders, but orders at houses for miles around, and without difficulty kept them all in his head till he went back to the shop; nor did he ever make a mistake, however numerous the orders might be.
.....School work, as a rule, makes too much of sensational memory. Next, it develops the carrying rather than the storing memory. The mind by practice can acquire the art of rapidly getting up a lesson, and as rapidly forgetting all about it. This "carrying power" is especially useful to barristers and actors, and they perform great feats of this kind. Actors study parts they are likely to act often, but they get up a part that is wanted only for a special occasion, and a part thus got up is forgotten immediately after the performance. The memory adapts itself wonderfully to circumstances.
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