Twain System

Summary

• Dates are difficult to acquire but valuable - like cattle-pens of a ranch

• why pictures? story: memorizing lecture
  • 11 items, initialing brief divisions of the lecture
  • had them by heart, but can't remember their order
  • chained to your notes. writing items on fingernails.
  • then pictures. pictures that could immediately be thrown away, because the pictures were so memorable
  • have remembered for 20 years

Example

Twain gives 3 example images from his lecture story above, but then goes into a much more detailed example involving a more difficult bit of memorization.

Rulers of England, from the Conqueror On Down

The idea is to see the reigns of each ruler with your eyes.

At Twain's house, there was a long fence that he marked out each English monarch at a location on the fence, with their reigns proportional to their distance along the fence - all 817 years represented by 817 feet.

Once Twain and his children were familiar with the sections of the fence, theyadded French reigns down to the Hundred Years' War, and added American history and English history, English and foreign poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues, cataclysms, revolutions.

Washington's birth belongs to George II's pegs

His death belongs to George III's

Geoge II got the Lisbon earthquate

George III got the Declaration of Independence

Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Savonarola, Joan of Arc, the French Revolution, the Edict of Nantes, Clive, Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey, Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga, Battle of the Boyne, invention of the logarithm, microscopes, steam engines, telegraph - everything was placed into the pegs of those English rulers