HELPING THE MEMORY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 25, 21 June 1890, Page 20

HELPING THE MEMORY.

Inexpensive as are good books and papers, there are still some households in the country in which not a book, excepting, perhaps, an unused Bible, can be found, and the onlyliterature on which the family feeds is the county paper. A correspondent who spent a night with one such family says that he picked up the county paper, which was an unusually poor sheet, and found nearly all of its contents marked with a blue pencil. Even the advertisements were thus marked. Turning to an old lady who sat near him, he said : • I have been wondering why nearly everything in this paper has a blue mark across it. ’ • Oh, I’ll tell you.' replied the old lady, pleasantly ‘ I make 'em myself. It’s my way of telling whether I’ve read such and such a piece or not. ‘Soon as I read it I mark it with a blue pencil, and next time I pick up the paper I know just what I’ve read and what I aint read, and I don't lose time reading the same thing twice. It's a real good way to help out a body’s mem'ry.’