Mrs. Bagley looked at the scramble of equipment in the room as though it were an enemy. It didn't look finished. It didn't even look safe. But she trusted James, although she felt at that moment that she would grow old and die before she understood why and how any collection of apparatus could be functional and still be so untidy. "It—could teach me?"
"If you had something you want to memorize."
"I'd like to memorize some of the pet recipes from my cookbook."
"Get it," directed James.
She hesitated. "How does it work?" she wanted to know first.
He countered with another question. "How do we memorize anything?"
She thought. "Why, by repeating and repeating and rehearsing and rehearsing."
"Yes," said James. "So this device does the repetition for you. Electromechanically."
"But how?"
James smiled wistfully. "I can give you only a thumbnail sketch," he said, "until I have had time to study the subjects that lead up to the final theory."