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New Light on PelmaiMsm By SIR HENRY LUCY. OUBTLESS among the En g- DOUBTLESS among there are lish-speaking race there are hundreds of thousands of tnen and women who ask What is -Pelmanism ? I confess that a few :\Veeks ago I was among the crowd. •Advertisement of the system, planned on' a scale of boundless liberality, has made the name familiar as household words. But 110 particulars of procedure are given. One vaguely thinks of it as Probably a patent medicine, or. per- adventure a fresh development of ■Use of the hypnotic needle. Piqued by' what is doubtless a Well-considered reticence, I readily accepted an opportunity of making" Myself fully acquainted with the system. On the threshold of inquiry I discovered that Pelman- lsih undertakes, among otter n things, to instruct pupils how to ¡train the senses, such as sight and tearing; how to concentrate atten- tiolland to strengthen will; how to observe; how to develop energy, enterprise, and self-conifdence. This is a pretty large order, indi- cating the potentiality of a man or Ionian attaining a high level of Illefltal efficiency. The method of training is, like Everything else connected with the Institute, simple and business-like. It would be impossible to crowd into a single building, even into a congeries of colleges, the multitude Who, not only in this country, but In India, Australia, South Africa, Canada, and the United States press forward to learn all about this new thing a new century has given birth tQ. Instruction is accordingly given through, the medium of cor- respondence. It comprises a series of a dozen lessons separately printed In what pupils affectionately call "The Little Grey Books." Stepby step the Student is led along the pathway of knowledge till at the close of the journey he finds that, in Measure unconsciously, he has eaten of the Tree thereof, and is a new man or a new woman. PERSONAL TESTIMONY. Personal testimony of the work- ing of the miracle is forthcoming in Some of the advertisements alluded to. In the course of my investiga- tion, untrammelled by any restric- tions, 17inspected a bundle of letters arrived by post on the morning of my visit. They were written. by men and women of all sorts and con- ditions actuated by the common im- pulse of making grateful acknow- ledgment of benefits derived from instructions received. It chanced that I recognised among the writers one or two* personal acquaintances lor whose good faith I am prepared to vouch. Notable was a letter from a widow-ed lady who bears an honoured name, for all time con- nected with a critical stage of Eng- land's War story. She artlessly told how, considering her advanced age, she had thought it useless to begin her school days over again. Finally yielding to impulse, her ladyship told now greatly she had benefited, and prettily expressed her regret that, commencing the twelfth lesson, she approached the termination of a course of tuition as attractive as it was beneficial. I pick this out from a single morn- ing's correspondence. There were in stock fresh piles of many yester- days. < I was greatly struck by the .variety and universality of the pupils. The system seems to have an especial attraction for the Army and Navy. Possibly the practical effect of its working may have con- tributed to the triumph of British arms on sea and land. It is certainly devised to train and X ^j»ngthen the very qualities essen- tial to success in arms such as courage, self-confidence, orderly concentration of thought, strength of will, alertness of sight and hear- ing, unfailing memory, unsleeping observation of the commonest ob- jects of daily life. A NEW CENSUS. The Institute is engaged in the preparation of a census of classes of the public who within the* last few weeks have been enrolled as Pel- manists. At the time of my visit. though the census, compiled alpha- betically, nad not extended beyond the letter C, not less than 200 occu- pations were listed. As might be expected, the largest number were clerks, male and female. Of these there are 2,667. Clergymen make a bold show. Four- hundred and' seventy have been at work within the last month, headed by an Arch- bishop and a Bishop. The units farm a striking group. They in- clude one astronomer, an alderman, a ship apprentice, a billiard- marker, a bath superintendent, a barmaid, a bulb grower, and a 'bus conductor. It is difficult to define Pelman- -ism in a phrase. Attempt may be made in the assertion that it sys- tematically applies psychological principles to the impulses, habits, and actions of daily life. As M. Jourdain was surprised to learn that he had been talking prose all his life, so the 'bus conductor, the billiard-marker, the barmaid, and the bath superintendent, on going through the course of lessons, may blush to find that certain tendencies in the direction of improvement of their mental and moral capacity are founded upon dicta as old as the schools ot Rome and Athens. In lessons set forth in due order in "The Little Grey Books" these abstruse doctrines are preached with attractive simplicity and lucidity. They more nearly resem- ble the conversation of a wise father with his' son than the dogmatic prosaics of a pedagogue. The pupil is invited to take part in the work by filling up and returning for ex- amination a sheet on which he sum- marises, in his own words, the pur- port of the current lessons and reports upon result of his dealing with the various exercises which form part of it. The paper is examined by one of three-score examiners, the majority University men who reply with counsel and correction proper to the case of each student. Pelmanism represents a great opportunity to the Board of Edu- cation. JProved by testimony of hundreds of thousands of adults, it would be priceless in its beneficial effect if it were incorporated in the system of elementary education. Operative through a score of years, it would create a new heaven and a new earth for the succeeding generation. SOME PRE-PELMANISTS. There is nothing new under the sun, not even Pelmanism. A quar- ter of a century has elapsed since the system was conceived. In the interval it has been slowly built up. But as in the early days of Holman Hunt, Millais and Rossetti there were Pre-Raphaelites, so there are, and have been, Pre-Pelmanists. As we have seen, strengthening of memory is one of the main objects sought and obtained in a course of training by the Pelman Institute. I have personal knowledge of four men in the House of Commons who attained the fullest perfection of memory. In his brilliant book, "Uncensored Üelebrities," in which he mercilessly dissects public men of the day, Mr. E. T. Raymond writes of Mr. Bonar Law: There is a sterilising touch of pessimism in his character." Omitting the adjective or substituting fertilising, and for pessimism writing Pelman- ism, we throw an illuminating flash of light on the character of the Leader of the House of Commons. His feats of memory are so common in their display as to have lost the J surprise of, novelty. Nevertheless .they remai-n marvellous., In expounding his Budget of this year Mr. Austen Chamberlain, after the manner of Chancellors of the Exchequer, provided himself with a bulky folio of MS. from which he read successive groups of figures. Mr. Bonar Law when formerly occupying the same position, laid on the brass-bound box a few slips of notes, to which he occasionally referred. The stupendous figures forming the credit and debit sides of the national balance-sheet he cited as if they were letters of the alphabet. FEATS OF MEMORY. Analogous feats of memory were accomplished without apparent effort by Henry Fawcett and Mr. Courtney, both compelled bv blind- ness to forgo the assistance of written notes. From the corner seat on the% Front Bench below the (srangwav, whither he was led bv a friendly hand, the Blind Bartimaeus who in succession represented Brighton and Hastings in the House of Commons, frequently rose and contributed to debate a weighty speech whose only drawback was a tendency to extreme length. The last speech made in the House of Commons by Mr. Court- ney before he—mirabile d'ictu- went to the House of Lords, dealt with a financial question of prime importance and profound intricacy. He brought with him MS. in the handwriting of his faithful secre- tary, Mrs. Courtney, on which his speech, privily delivered in his study, was written. As a matter of precaution he placed this in the hand of a friend seated near by on the bench from which, he rose to address the House. This gentle- man's function was, prompter-wise, to follow the speech, turning over successive leaves of the MS. ready to whisper a cue in case the orator temporarily lost the thread of his discourse by the turn of a sentence. He told me on the conclusion of the debate that, except when, inspired by a passing thought, Courtney occasionally added a brief passage to the original text he faultlessly followed the w4tten draft of his speech. LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. A fourth miracle-monger in the domain of memory was Lord Ran- dolph Churchill. Dining with me one night conversation among the company turned on the subject of memory. Lord Randolph said it sufficed him to read a page of a printed book to enable him to repeat its contents. Challenged on the point he took a volume from the bookcase, read a page, handed me the opened book and straightway recited a long passage, only once paraphrasing a sentence. The gift is, in measure,' hereditary. The present Secretary of State for War when he entered the House, having learned off by heart his maiden speech, though occasionally over- come by now unfamiliar timidity,, successfully recited it. It is triifr that on a later occasion, essaying a similar task and not having pro- vided himself with MS. notes, Jie hesitated in the middle of his pero- ration, and after a moment's agi- tated hesitation abruptly sat down, his sentence like the unfinished window in Aladdin's Tower" un- finished must remain. That, how- ever, was an exception that proved a remarkable rule. These Pre-Pelmanists attained high proficiency as memorists with- out assistance from The Little Grey Books." Doubtless they un- consciously trained themselves on the lines therein laid down for the guidance of persons less gifted by nature. In conjunction with memory the habit of close observa- tion is a basic block upon which the fabric of Pelmanism is truly built.