GREAT FEATS OF MEMORY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 273, 8 April 1911, Page 9

GREAT FEATS OF MEMORY.

Idiots have been known whose memory for names and words was so retentive that they could repeat a sermon verbatim and indicate where the preacher blew his nose and coughed while delivering it. Cardinal Massefanti, the linguist, who is said to have known a hundred languages, declared that he never forgot a word he had once learned. To a friend who had congratulated Leyden on his remarkable memory, he replied that he had often found it a sourco of great inconvenience. On the friend expressing suprise, he explained that he had often wished to recall a particular expression in something he had read, but could not do it until lie had repeated the whole passage from the beginning to the expression he desired to recall. An English clergyman mentions a man who could remember the day of the burial of every member who had died in the parish during thirty-five years, and also could repeat the name and age! of each deceased person, and the names of the mourners at his funeral, but so weak was he intellectually that he could not be trusted to feed himself. Dr. Moffatt, the distinguished African missionary, and father-in-law of Dr. Livingstone, once preached a long sermon to a crowd of negroes. Shortly after he had finished he saw a number of negroes gather about a simple-minded young savage. He went to them and discovered that the savage was preaching his s.ermon over again. Not only was he reproducing the precise words, but imitating the manner and gestures of the white preacher.