MEMORY AND MORALS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 29, 9 April 1907, Page 7

MEMORY AND MORALS.

CL hi s seems to mo to be a good subject,” remarked recently the king of the world’s humorists. “You see, everybody has a memory, and, of course, everybody has morals. “It’s niy opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn’t like to ask. Speaking of memory in general, and of mine in particular, it’s strange to think of all the tricks this little mental process plays on us Here we To emiowed with a faculty of mind that ought to be more supremely scvvicable to us than them all.

And what happens ? This memory of ours stores up a perfect record of the most useless facts and anecdotes and experiences. And all the things that we ought to know—that we need to know—that we’d profit my knowing—its casts aside with the careless indifference of a girl refusing her true lover.

“It’s terrible to think of this phenomenon. I tremble in all my members when I consider all the really valuable things that I've forgotten in seventy years—when I meditate upon the caprices of my memory.

“There’s a bird out in California that is one perfect symbol of the human memory. I’ve forgotten the bird’s name (just because it would be valuable for mo to know it —to recall it to your own minds, perhaps.) “But this fool of a creature goes around collecting the most ridiculous things you can imagine, and storing them up. He never selects a thing that could ever prove of the slightest, help to him. But he goes about gathering iron forks and spoons and tin cans and broken mousetraps—all sorts of rubbish that is difficult for him to carry and won’t be of any use when ho gets it. “Now, my mind is just like that ; and my mind isn’t very different from yours—and so our minds are just like that bird.

“We pass by what would be of estimable value to ns and pack our memories with the most trivial odds and ends—that never by any chance, under any circumstancees whatsoever could be of tho slightest use to any one.

“A T ow, things that I have remembered are constantly popping into my head. And I am repeatedly startled by tho vividness with which they recur to me after tho lapse of years and their utter uselessness in being remembered at all.

“For instance, I remember the first time I stole anything—l mean annexed anything. "The ‘anything’ in this instance was a melon I stole—that is to say annexed —it from a farmer’s waggon, carried it to a secluded recess, and broke it open. “It was a green melon, and quite unfit to eat.

"Well, do you know when I saw that 1 began to feel sorry—sorry—sorry. It seemed to mo that I had done wrong. I reflected deeply. “I reflected that I was young. I think 1 was just eleven. Hut I knew that though immature '■l knew what a hoy ought to do who had extracted a water-melon —like that. ‘ I said to myself, ‘I will do it. I will take that green melon back where I got it from.’ •‘.So I gathered up the biggest fragments and 1 carried them back to the farmer's waggon, and 1 restored the watermelon—what there was left of it.

“And I st —that is to say, I annexed a ripe one in its place. “.Vow what pood, I should like to know, does it do a man to remember an incident like that ?”