together. After thirty, unpleasant memories are but little recalled. For the Indians
and negroes in this census, unpleasant memories play a far more and often
preponderating rôle suggesting persecution and sad experiences. Different
elements of the total content of memory come to prominence at different ages.
He also found that the best remembered years of life are sixteen to seventeen for
males and fifteen for females, and that in general the adolescent period has more
to do than any other in forming and furnishing the memory plexus, while the
seventh and eighth year are most poorly remembered.
It is also known that many false memories insert themselves into the texture of
remembered experiences. One dreams a friend is dead and thinks she is till she is
met one day in the street; or dreams of a fire and inquires about it in the
morning; dreams of a present and searches the house for it next day; delays
breakfast for a friend, who arrived the night before in a dream, to come down to
breakfast; a child hunts for a bushel of pennies dreamed of, etc. These phantoms
falsify our memory most often, according to Dr. Colegrove, between sixteen and
nineteen.
Mnemonic devices prompt children to change rings to keep appointments, tie
knots in the handkerchief, put shoes on the dressing-table, hide garments,
associate faces with hoods, names with acts, things, or qualities they suggest;
visualize, connect figures, letters with colors, etc. From a scrutiny of the original
material, which I was kindly allowed to make, this appears to rise rapidly at
puberty.
[Footnote 1: See my Ideal School as Based on Child Study. Proceedings of the
National Educational Association, 1901, pp. 470-490.]
[Footnote 2: Charles P.G. Scott: The Number of Words in the English and Other
Languages. Princeton University Bulletin, May, 1902, vol. 13, pp. 106-111.]
[Footnote 3: The Teaching of English. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1902, vol. 9,
pp. 161-168.]
[Footnote 4: See my Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self. American
Journal of Psychology, April, 1898, vol. 9, pp. 351-395.]
[Footnote 5: Sprachgeschichte und Sprachpsychologie, mit Rucksicht auf
B. Delbrück's "Grundfragen der Sprachforschung." Leipzig, W.