Adventure, December 3, 1920 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

to ADVENTURE A Startling Memory feat That You Can Do How I learned the secret in one evening. HEN my old triend Faulkner invited me V V to a dinner party at his house, I little thought it would be the direct means of getting me a one-hundred-and-fifty per cent. increase in salary. Yet it was, and here is the way it all came about. Toward the close of the evening things began to drag a bit, as they often do at parties. Finally some ne suggested the old idea of having everyone do a “stunt.” Some sang, others forced weird sounds out of the piano, recited, told stories, and so on. Then it came to Macdonald’s turn. He was a quiet sort of chap, with an air about him that reminded me of the old saying that “‘still waters run deep.” He said he had a simple “stunt”? which he hoped we would like. He selected me to assist him. First he asked to be blindfolded securely to prove there was no trickery in it. Those present were to call out twenty-five numbers of three figures each, such as 161, 249, and so on. He asked me to write down the numbers as they were called. This was done. Macdonald then astotinded every- me by repeating the entire list of twenty-five num- bers backwards and forwards. Then he asked peo- ple to request numbers by positions, such as the eighth number called, the fourth number, and so on. Instantly he repeated back the exact number in the position called. He did this with the entire list—over and over again, without making a single mistake. Then Macdonald asked that a deck of cards be Kindly mention Adventure in writing to advertisers or visiting your dealer. comnicloooks.€e) It has helped me every day shuffled and called out to him in their order. This was done. Still blindfolded, he instantly named the cards in their order backwards and forwards. And then to further amaze us he gave us the number of any card counting from the top, or the card for any number. You may well imagine our amazement at Mac- donald’s remarkable feat. You naturally expect to see a thing of this sort on the stage, and even then you look upon it as a trick. But to see it done by an everyday business man, in plain view of every- one, blindfolded and under conditions which make trickery impossible, is astonishing, to say the least. * * * * co ON the way home that night I asked Macdonald how it was done. He said there was really nothing to it—simply a memory ieat, the key to which anyone could easily learn in one evening. Then he told me that the reason most people have bad memories is because they leave memory de- velopment to chance. Anyone could do what he had done, and develop a good memory, he said, by following a few simple rules. And then he told me exactly how to do it. At the time I little thought that evening would prove to be one of the most eventful in my life, but such it proved to be. What Macdonald told me I took to heart. In one evening I made remarkable strides toward im- proving my memory and it was but a question of days before I learned to do exactly what he had done.