Instances are on record in which those who had heard passages
from a foreign and perfectly unintelligible tongue, which
seemed, of course, to have passed at once from out their
recollection, as the breath fades off from the polished
mirror--have afterward recalled these in delirium or death, or
at some moment of extraordinary excitement, with the utmost
clearness and fullness of detail. And the instances are
frequent, within our observation, in which aged men recall with
vivid distinctness the poetry they recited, the problems they
studied, the games they played, in the freshness of youth, or
the arguments they made in the prime of their manhood; altho
a thousand intervening events had taken a prominence before
them since that, these never had seemed to have submerged those
forever in their thoughts--RICHARD S. STORRS.
(2010)