(2004)
MEMORY
God’s precepts should be as thoroughly stamped on the memory as the landscape mentioned below was on the artist’s mind:
A publisher ordered from Gustave Doré a picture, sending him a photograph of some Alpine scenery to be copied. The artist went away without his model, and the publisher was much provoked; but he was astonished when Doré appeared next day with the desired picture, having made it from memory. A few seconds’ examination of the photograph had sufficed to impress on his memory the slightest details and to enable him to reproduce them with not a rock or a tree lacking. (Text.)—L. Menard, Cosmos.
(2005)
“What did I do with that memorandum?” said a distinguished-looking man, speaking half to himself but with his eyes on the clerk, who stood waiting for his order in a large city grocery. “What I’ve done with that memorandum this time I really can not imagine. But you just wait a minute.”
He began searching his pockets. From each of them came scraps of paper, big and little, old letters with pencil notes on them, envelops similarly decorated, two or three small note-books, a theater program, and a number of pieces evidently torn from the margin of a newspaper and covered with writing. He examined the scraps one after another and restored each bunch to its separate pocket. The clerk waited, and a customer farther along the counter eyed the display with curiosity.
“Gone,” said the gentleman, with an air of finality. “I’ll have to trust to memory.”
The clerk nodded.