ABSTRACT
There was one experience in connection with my service with the Post that has always impressed me as almost wonderful, and I mention it here believing it may encourage some young man to attempt to overcome a bad habit before it is too late. The outcome in my case is not as encouraging as I could wish, but there certainly was progress made; perhaps a stronger will would have achieved a permanent success. The case was this: from boyhood I had been afflicted with a bad memory for names. I even forgot the names of boys who had been schoolmates. On one occasion, during my experiences in Boston in a thread and needle store in 1856, a young man from my own New Hampshire town had a job driving a market wagon, and occasionally called at the store where I was employed, and once came in to spend a Sunday with me and brought a watermelon for our personal delectation. Late in the afternoon of that Sunday I had to ask this friend to tell me his name. This weakness seemed so serious a fault that I thought very likely it might lead to my losing the good place I had fallen into, and I resolved to overcome the deficiency if I possibly could. So effective was that resolve that during the entire seven years of my employment there arose no case where I had difficulty about remembering a name; and there is no name that became known to me during that seven years that I cannot now recall without effort, after a lapse of more than forty years, and yet (and this is the discouraging part of the story) no sooner had I left the employment, wherein that resolve had been made, and commenced a business of my own, than the old infirmity reasserted itself, and has continued to this day; to such an extent that I confidently expect some day to have to consult my card case to ascertain my own name.
