MISCELLANEOUS
CURIOUS TRICKS AND FANCIES.
"Youth loves and lives on change,
Till the soul sighs for sameness, which at last
Becomes variety, and takes its place."
AN ARTIFICIAL MEMORY.
The reader must have observed, that to perform several of the recreations in this book, it is necessary to have a good memory; but as that is a gift every one has not from nature, many methods have been contrived to supply that defect by art—the most material of which we shall here describe.
An artificial memory respects either figures or words; for the former, let the five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, represent the first five digits; the diphthongs that begin with the first four vowels, as au, ea, ie, ou, representing the remaining four digits, let y stand for an 0, or cypher. Let the ten first consonants also stand for the nine digits and the cypher, as in the following table:
| a | e | i | o | u | au | ea | ie | ou | y |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 |
| b | c | d | f | g | h | k | l | m | n |