God’s precepts should be as thoroughly stamped on the memory as the
landscape mentioned below was on the artist’s mind:
A publisher ordered from Gustave Doré a picture, sending him a
photograph of some Alpine scenery to be copied. The artist went
away without his model, and the publisher was much provoked;
but he was astonished when Doré appeared next day with the
desired picture, having made it from memory. A few seconds’
examination of the photograph had sufficed to impress on his
memory the slightest details and to enable him to reproduce them
with not a rock or a tree lacking. (Text.)--L. MENARD,
_Cosmos_.
(2005)
* * * * *
“What did I do with that memorandum?” said a
distinguished-looking man, speaking half to himself but with his
eyes on the clerk, who stood waiting for his order in a large
city grocery. “What I’ve done with that memorandum this time I
really can not imagine. But you just wait a minute.”
He began searching his pockets. From each of them came scraps of
paper, big and little, old letters with pencil notes on them,
envelops similarly decorated, two or three small note-books, a
theater program, and a number of pieces evidently torn from the
margin of a newspaper and covered with writing. He examined the
scraps one after another and restored each bunch to its separate
pocket. The clerk waited, and a customer farther along the
counter eyed the display with curiosity.
“Gone,” said the gentleman, with an air of finality. “I’ll have
to trust to memory.”
The clerk nodded.
“Six eggs?” he said, with an interrogative inflection.
“Right,” said the gentleman.
The clerk wrote it down. “A pound of butter?” he continued.
“A pound of butter,” agreed the gentleman.
“Bread?”
“Three loaves.”
“Coffee?”
The gentleman hesitated. “No,” he said, with decision. “Coffee
enough on hand to last the rest of the week.” He smiled
contentedly, watched the clerk write a name and address at the
top of the order, and then went out of the shop whistling.
“How did you know what he wanted?” asked the other customer of
the clerk.
“He lives just around the corner in an apartment, and he and his
wife get their own breakfasts. Always the same things--never any
change--but he always has to have it written down.”
“Do you know who he is?”
“His name is Bertini, I think. He’s a kind of professor. I
believe he has a kind of memory system he teaches to people who
can’t remember things.”
The other customer smiled, but the clerk was quite serious. He
had no sense of humor.--_The Youth’s Companion._
(2006)
See ABSENT-MINDEDNESS.