MEMORY SYSTEM 4

THE CLASSICAL ROOM SYSTEM
Before moving on to two of the more major Peg systems, you
shall have a light and easy day's work with a simple little Room
system.
In the section dealing with the history of memory, I men-
tioned that the Romans accepted without question the theore-
tical ideas of memory introduced by the Greeks. I added that
one of their major contributions was the introduction and
development of memory systems.
One of their most popular systems made use of objects in a
room. Such a system is easily constructed. Try to imagine an
enormous room with a door. Now fill this room with as many
items of furniture and other objects as you wish—each item of
furniture will serve as a link word. Don't make a mental
rubbish-dump of it, though! Your objects should be very
precisely ordered.
For example, you may decide to start on the immediate right
of the door as you enter the room, placing there a finely carved
coffee-table, on which you might put anything from a statue to
an attractive lamp. Next to this you could have an antique
sofa, and so on.
You can see that the possibilities are almost limitless—but
make sure that your objects are memorisable and that you can
keep them mentally placed in the right order.
How is such a system used? When you are given a list of
objects you wish to remember in order (it being not necessary
to remember reverse, random, or numerical order), you simply
associate the items to be remembered with the objects in your
room. Suppose, for instance, that your first three items were
'oil', 'insect', and 'girl'. Using the examples given, the oil could
be imagined flowing all over the coffee table, the insect could
be enlarged and perched on top of the statue or could be
flying around the lamp, and the girl could be draped seduct-
ively on the sofa!
YOUR CLASSICAL MEMORY ROOM
The advantage of this system is that it is entirely your own,
that the room may be as large as you wish, may have as many
walls as you care to imagine, and may contain a great number
of memory-peg objects.
On the blank page provided here you should now construct
your own room, selecting the shape you feel is best, and then
finally printing in the objects with which you are going to
furnish it.
When you have completed this task, take a number of
mental walks around the room until you are completely
familiar with the order and arrangement of things. As with the
previous memory systems, practise alone and with friends,
until your system is firmly established.
In the next chapter I shall be introducing the Alphabet
system, which will enable you to remember more than 20
items.