Literature is full of words descriptive of things that all have seen or heard. We render a service to the memory if in reading we linger long enough to call up the colors, shapes, motions, sounds, that are suggested by the text. Some persons recall sights more easily than sounds, some recall sounds more easily than sights; some can remember motions more easily than either colors, shapes, or sounds. It is therefore good training for the word-memory if we endeavor to recall all kinds of sense impressions. Read the following passage slowly, imagining the sights, motions, and sensations of touch, that are suggested.
A long way down that limpid water, chill and bright as an iceberg, went my little self that day on man’s choice errand—destruction. All the young fish seemed to know that I was one who had taken out God’s certificate, and meant to have the value of it; every one of them was aware that we desolate more than replenish the earth. For a cow might come and look into the water, and put her yellow lips down; a kingfisher, like a blue arrow, might shoot through the dark alleys over the channel, or sit on a dipping withy-bough with his beak sunk into his breast-feathers; even an otter might float down stream, likening himself to a log of wood, with his flat head flush with the water-top, and his oily eyes peering quietly; and yet no panic would seize other life, as it does when a sample of man comes.—R. D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone.
Imagine as vividly as possible each sound and other physical sensation suggested by the following selection, from the book just quoted:—
The volumes of the mist came rolling at me (like great logs of wood, pillowed out with sleepiness), and between them there was nothing more than waiting for the next one. Then everything went out of sight, and glad was I of the stone behind me, and view of mine own shoes. Then a distant noise went by me, as of many horses galloping, and in my fright I set my gun and said, “God send something to shoot at.” Yet nothing came, and my gun fell back, without my will to lower it.
But presently, while I was thinking “What a fool I am!” arose as if from below my feet, so that the great stone trembled, that long lamenting, lonesome sound, as of an evil spirit not knowing what to do with it. For the moment I stood like a root, without either hand or foot to help me, and the hair of my head began to crawl, lifting my hat, as a snail lifts his house, and my heart like a shuttle went to and fro. But finding no harm to come of it, neither visible form approaching, I wiped my forehead and hoped for the best, and resolved to run every step of the way till I drew our own latch behind me.
Yet here again I was disappointed, for no sooner was I come to the cross-ways by the black pool in the hole, but I heard through the patter of my own feet a rough low sound very close in the fog, as of a hobbled sheep a-coughing. I listened, and feared, and yet listened again, though I wanted not to hear it. For being in haste of the homeward road, and all my heart having heels to it, loath I was to stop in the dusk for the sake of an aged wether. Yet partly my love of all animals, and partly my fear of the farmer’s disgrace, compelled me to go to the succor, and the noise was coming nearer. A dry, short, wheezing sound it was, barred with coughs and want of breath; but thus I made the meaning of it:—
What do you see mentally, when you read the following?
Sweet are the uses of adversity,