The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing Part 49

Princ.i.p.al tours: To New Orleans in 1885; Chicago, 1893; Atlanta, 1895; Boston, 1902; St Louis, 1904.

HOW THE PRESIDENTS DIED.

George Was.h.i.+ngton's death was the result of a severe cold contracted while riding around his farm in a rain and sleet storm on Dec. 10, 1799.

The cold increased and was followed by a chill, which brought on acute laryngitis. He died at the age of 68, on Dec. 14, 1799.

John Adams died from old age, having reached his ninety-first milestone.

Though active mentally, he was nearly blind and unable to hold a pen steadily enough to write. He pa.s.sed away without pain on July 4, 1826.

Thomas Jefferson died at the age of eighty-three, a few hours before Adams, on July 4, 1826. His disease was chronic diarrhoea, superinduced by old age, and his physician said the too free use of the waters of the white sulphur springs.

James Madison also died of old age, and peacefully, on June 28, 1836.

His faculties were undimmed to the last. He was eighty-five.

James Monroe's demise, which occurred in the seventy-third year of his age, on July 4, 1831, was a.s.signed to enfeebled health.

John Quincy Adams was stricken with paralysis on Feb. 21, 1848, while addressing the Speaker of the House of Representatives, being at the time a member of Congress. He died in the rotunda of the Capitol. He was eighty-one years of age.

Andrew Jackson died on June 8, 1845, seventy-eight years old. He suffered from consumption and finally dropsy, which made its appearance about six months before his death.

Martin Van Buren died on July 24, 1862, from a violent attack of asthma, followed by catarrhal affections of the throat and lungs. He was eighty years of age.

William Henry Harrison's death was caused by pleurisy, the result of a cold, which he caught on the day of his inauguration. This was accompanied with severe diarrhoea, which would not yield to medical treatment. He died on April 4, 1841, a month after his inauguration. He was sixty-eight years of age.

John Tyler died on Jan. 17, 1862, at the age of seventy-two. Cause of death, bilious colic.

James K. Polk was stricken with a slight attack of cholera in the spring of 1849, while on a boat going up the Mississippi River. Though temporarily relieved, he had a relapse on his return home and died on June 15, 1849, aged fifty-four years.

Zachary Taylor was the second President to die in office. He is said to have partaken immoderately of ice water and iced milk, and then later of a large quant.i.ty of cherries. The result was an attack of cholera morbus. He was sixty-six years old.

Millard Fillmore died from a stroke of paralysis on March 8, 1874, in his seventy-fourth year.

Franklin Pierce's death was due to abdominal dropsy, and occurred on Oct. 8, l869, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.

James Buchanan's death occurred on June 1, 1868, and was caused by rheumatic gout. He was seventy-seven years of age.

Abraham Lincoln was shot by J. Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., on April 14, 1865, and died the following day, aged fifty-six.

Andrew Johnson died from a stroke of paralysis July 31, 1875, aged sixty-seven.

U. S. Grant died of cancer of the tongue, at Mt. McGregor, N. Y., July 3, 1885.

James A. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2. 1881. Died Sept. 19, 1881.

Chester A. Arthur, who succeeded Garfield, died suddenly of apoplexy in New York City, Nov. 18, 1886.

Rutherford B. Hayes died Jan. 17, 1803, the result of a severe cold contracted in Cleveland, Ohio.

Benjamin Harrison died March 13, 1901. Cause of death, pneumonia.

William McKinley was a.s.sa.s.sinated Sept. 14, 1901.

Grover Cleveland died on June 24, 1908, of debility, aged 71.

WHO IS THE AUTHOR?

The following literary curiosity found its way recently into the query column of a Boston newspaper. n.o.body seems to know who wrote it:

O I wish I was in eden Where all the beastes is feedin, the Pigs an cows an osses.

And the long tale Bull wot tosses the Bulldog and the Rabbit, acaus it is his habbit; Where Lions, Tigurs, monkees, And them long-ear'd things call'd Donkeys, Meat all together daylee With Crockedyles all Skaley, Where sparros on the bus.h.i.+s Sings to there mates, the thrus.h.i.+s, an Hawks and Littel Rens Wawks about like c.o.c.ks and Ens, One looking at the tuther for all the World like a Bruther.

Where no quarlin is or Phytin, its tru wot ime aritin.

O for a wauk at even, somewhere abowt 6 or 7, When the Son be gwain to bed, with his fase all fyree red.

O for the grapes and resins Wot ripens at all seesins; the appels and the Plumbs As Big as my 2 thums; the hayprec.o.c.ks an peechis, Wot all within our reech is, An we mought pick an heat, paying nothing for the treat.

O for the pooty flouers A bloomin at all ours, So that a large Bokay Yew may gether any day Of ev'ry flour that blose from Colleflour to rose.

THE ART OF NOT FORGETTING.

A Brief but Comprehensive Treatise Based on Loisette's Famous System of Memory Culture.

So much has been said about Loisette's memory system, the art has been so widely advertised, and so carefully guarded from all the profane who do not send five or many dollars to the Professor, that a few pages, showing how man may be his own Loisette, may be both interesting and valuable.

In the first place, the system is a good one, and well worth the labor of mastering, and if the directions are implicitly followed there can be no doubt that the memory will be greatly strengthened and improved, and that the mnemonic feats otherwise impossible may be easily performed.

Loisette, however, is not an inventor, but an introducer. He stands in the same relation to Dr. Pick that the retail dealer holds to the manufacturer: the one produced the article, the other brings it to the public. Even this statement is not quite fair to Loisette, for he has brought much practical common sense to bear upon Pick's system, and, in preparing the new art of mnemonics for the market, in many ways he has made it his own.

If each man would reflect upon the method by which he himself remembers things, he would find his hand upon the key of the whole mystery. For instance, I was once trying to remember the word "Blythe." There occurred to my mind the words "Bellman," "Belle," and the verse:

"---- the peasant upward climbing Hears the bells of Buloss chiming."

"Barcarole," "Barrack," and so on, until finally the word "Blythe"

presented itself with a strange insistence, long after I had ceased trying to recall it.

On another occasion, when trying to recall the name "Richardson," I got the words "hay-rick," "Robertson," "Randallstown," and finally "wealthy," from which, naturally, I got "rich" and "Richardson" almost in a breath.

Still another example: Trying to recall the name of an old schoolmate, "Grady," I got "Brady," "grave," "gaseous," "gastronome," "gracious,"

and I finally abandoned the attempt, simply saying to myself that it began with a "G," and there was an "a" sound after it. The next morning when thinking of something entirely different, this name "Grady" came up in my mind with as much distinctness as though someone had whispered it in my ear. This remembering was done without any conscious effort on my part, and was evidently the result of the exertion made the day before when the mnemonic processes were put to work. Every reader must have had a similar experience which he can recall, and which will fall in line with the examples given.

It follows, then, that when we endeavor, without the aid of any system, to recall a forgotten fact or name, our memory presents to us words of similar sound or meaning in its journey toward the goal to which we have started it. This goes to show that our ideas are arranged in groups in whatever secret cavity or recess of the brain they occupy, and that the arrangement is not an alphabetical one exactly, and not entirely by meaning, but after some fas.h.i.+on partaking of both.

If you are looking for the word "meadow" you may reach "middle" before you come to it, or "Mexico," or many, words beginning with the "m"

sound, or containing the "dow", as window, or "dough," or you may get "field" or "farm"--but you are on the right track, and if you do not interfere with your intellectual process you will finally come to the idea which you are seeking.

How often have you heard people say, "I forget his name, it is something like Beadle or Beagle--at any rate it begins with a B." Each and all of these were unconscious Loisettians, and they were practicing blindly, and without proper method or direction, the excellent system which he teaches. The thing, then, to do--and it is the final and simple truth which Loisette teaches--is to travel over this ground in the other direction--to cement the fact which you wish to remember to some other fact or word which you know will be brought out by the implied conditions--and thus you will always be able to travel from your given starting-point to the thing which you wish to call to mind.