Page:Memory; how to develop, train, and use it - Atkinson - 1919.djvu/137

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To Remember Places
131

place. They remember the places they visit and their relation in space to each other. Their minds are like maps upon which are engraved the various roads, streets and objects of sight in every direction. When these people think of China, Labrador, Terra del Fuego, Norway, Cape of Good Hope, Thibet, or any other place, they seem to think of it in “this direction or that direction” rather than as a vague place situated in a vague direction. Their minds think “north, south, east or west” as the case may be when they consider a given place. Shading down by degrees we find people at the other pole of the faculty who seem to find it impossible to remember any direction, or locality or relation in space. Such people are constantly losing themselves in their own towns, and fear to trust themselves in a strange place. They have no sense of direction, or place, and fail to recognize a street or scene which they have visited recently, not to speak of those which they traveled over in time past. Between these two poles or degrees there is a vast difference, and it is difficult to realize that it is all a matter of use, interest and attention. That it is