“It isn’t a bit conclusive. I don’t say that the conscious exercise of memory mayn’t be temporarily dependent on organisation, but I do believe that every fact ever imprinted on the memory, however long it may be latent, is of its very nature imperishable.”
“Yes,” said Suton. “Memory is the book of God. Did you see that story of the shipwreck the other day? One of the survivors, while floating alone on the dark midnight sea, suddenly heard a voice saying to him distinctly, ‘Johnny, did you eat sister’s grapes?’ It was the revived memory of a long-forgotten childish theft. What have the Pineal-Gland-olaters to say to that?”
“What a profound touch that was of Themistocles,” said Kennedy, “who rejected the offer of a Memoria Technicha, with the aspiration that some one could teach him to forget. Lethe is the grandest of rivers after all.”
“I can illustrate what you are saying,” said Brogten, “and I believe it to be true that nothing can be utterly forgotten. Yesterday when you saw me I had sunk twice, and when you rescued me I was insensible. Strange things happened to my memory then!”
“Tell us,” said all of them eagerly.
“Well, I believe it’s an old story, but I’ll tell you. When the first agony of fear, and the sort of gulp of asphyxia was over, I felt as if I was sinking into a pleasant sleep, surrounded by the light of green fields—”
“Because the veins of the eye were bloodshot, and green is the complementary colour,” interpolated Kennedy, whereat Owen gave a little incredulous guffaw; and Brogten continued—
“Well, then, it was that all my past life flashed before me, from the least forgotten venial fault of infancy to the worst passion of youth,—only they came to me clear and vivid, in retrograde order. The lies I told when I was a little boy, the wicked words I spoke, the cruel things I did, the first taint that polluted my mind, the faces of school-fellows whom I had irreparably injured, the stolen waters of manhood—all were dashed into my remorseful recollection; they started up like buried, menacing ghosts, without, or even against my will. I felt convinced that they were indestructible.”
“That strain I heard was of a higher mood!” thought the auditors, for it was quite a new thing to hear Brogten talk like this, and in such a solemn, manly, sober voice.
“Fancy,” said Kennedy, sighing, “an everlasting memory!”