"Retentive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soils, need more manure than loamy or heavy lands? We answer—because, in the first place the rains which quickly descend through the open soil, wash down out of the reach of vegetation the soluble fertilizing matters, especially the nitrates, for which the soil has no retentive power; and in the second place, from the porosity of the soil, the air has too great access, so that the vegetable and animal matters of manures decay too rapidly, their volatile portions, ammonia and carbonic acid, escape into the atmosphere, and are in measure lost to the crops. ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... pieces of the Old Testament, and, at the Synagogue school, all the minutiae of the Jewish Law. The pupil was not allowed to write anything down; all was committed to the memory, which in consequence became extremely retentive. The perfect pupil 'lost not a drop from his teacher's cistern.' At the age of about fourteen the boy would be sent to Jerusalem, to study under one of the great Rabbis; in St. Paul's case it was Gamaliel. Under his tuition the young Pharisee would learn to be a 'strong Churchman.' The Rabbis viewed ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... easier thing to get into a house in Ireland than to get out of it again; for there is an attractive and retentive witchery about the hospitality of the natives of that country, which has no match, as far as I have seen, in the wide world. In other places the people are hospitable or kind to a stranger; but in Ireland the affair is reduced to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... regarded as the model good boy at the boarding-schools wherein he had spent most of his life, he had been a general favorite with both teachers and scholars. A certain frankness in mischief and buoyancy of spirit had carried him through all difficulties, while his apt mind and retentive memory always kept him near to the head of his classes. The quality of alertness was one of his characteristics. In schools and at the university he quickly mastered their small politics and prevailing ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... insatiable thirst for knowledge, all the advantages of the village school were given him. His progress here was phenomenal. His eagerness to know truth; his power of mind to perceive, comprehend and analyze; his retentive memory, soon gave him first place among his fellows in the school in the village. A few years passed; he in the meantime having prepared himself, the master-mantle of the village school falls upon him. His work here caused a widening of his intellectual horizon. In the year ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Virgin. I told them my baptismal name, which they accurately remembered; they told me theirs in return, which I very soon forgot. I mention this trifling circumstance, because I afterwards was frequently surprised at the retentive memory of these people during my journey through the desert towards the ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... capacity, especially its very retentive memory for places, I was led to ask myself whether it would not be possible to make a suitably-chosen Bee build in any place that I wished, even in my study. And I wanted, for an experiment of this sort, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... greedily and snatches at high things ambitiously that despises his neighbor proudly and bears his crosses peevishly or his prosperity impotently and passionately he that is a prodigal of his precious time and is tenacious and retentive of evil purposes is not a man disposed to this exercise: he hath reason to be afraid of his own memory and to dash his glass in pieces because it must needs represent to his own eyes an intolerable deformity. JEREMY TAYLOR, Holy ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Chinese and Japanese use rice very extensively, and this grain is growing in favor with us. White people generally prefer wheat, which is an excellent grain that has been used by man for thousands of years. It has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and it is so retentive of life that it has started to grow after lying dormant for several thousand years. Truly it is a worthy food ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... knight, and last at this end of the bench, is a little man in spectacles, and with a preternatural look of wisdom on his face. He is the Right Hon. Lyon Playfair, and is said to have, next to Mr. Fawcett, the most remarkably retentive memory of any man in the House. Chiltern says he always writes his lectures before he delivers them to the House, sending the manuscript to the Times, and so accurate is his recitation that the editor has only to sprinkle the lecture with ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... impressed with the boy's ability, and with the consent of his parents taught him the elements of English and Latin. Allowed to use the library of Mr. Rault, Ollier early became acquainted with the best literature. It is said that he had a very retentive memory and that he could repeat and write at will long ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... cold or draught; it protects from malignant demons; it makes wise the simple by keeping the mind in a healthy condition; it enables a man to come off clear from a judicial inquiry; it qualifies him both to learn and to teach the law; it makes him eagerly listened to, to have a retentive memory, etc. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... which seemed occasionally to tremble with the excess of melody that burdened them played hide-and-seek among the hills, startling whole choruses of deep-throated echoes, and attending and retentive ocean, catching the strains on her beryl strings, bore them whither—and how far? To palm-plumed equatorial isles, where dying auricular nerves mistook them for seraphic utterances? To toiling mariners, tossed helplessly by fierce typhoons, who, pausing in their scramble for spars, listened to the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... this child of whom his father said once that he had never had any boyhood days in the ordinary sense, were early noted in his fondness for building little plank roads out of the debris of the yards and mills. His extraordinarily retentive memory was shown in his easy acquisition of all the songs of the lumber gangs and canal men before he was five years old. One incident tells how he was found one day in the village square copying ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... desire for adventure shows itself in early adolescence, altruism "appears in the early teens," and the sex instinct "after about a dozen years of life." The child of from four to six is largely sensory, from seven to nine he is motor, from then to twelve the retentive powers are prominent. In the adolescent period he is capable of thinking logically and reasoning, while maturity finds him a man of responsibilities and affairs. Although there is some truth in the belief that certain tendencies ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... printed many of his own letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... goods for the civilized world, and especially for the United States. Parliament had enacted a law prohibiting the carrying of machinist's tools out of Great Britain. The young mechanic was compelled to leave his tools behind. He had a retentive memory and active mind; he settled in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and set himself to work to construct a machine for the carding of wool, which at that time was done wholly by hand. The Pittsfield Sun of November 2, 1801, contained an advertisement ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... history could not be written because there was no writing, and when all truth was conveyed in symbolical forms. That means toward a time of narrow experience, and of knowledge far more limited than the present. Memory, in those days, was enormously and abnormally capacious and retentive, but there was no appreciation of humanity. Few lessons from the experiences of others were possible, because the mind was filled with merely tribal legends. What was called early civilization was only relatively splendid. There was unsurpassed poetry but no science, ample brawn ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... much which the other was desirous of learning, we exchanged our notions with great delight. I perceived that I had, every day, more of his confidence, and always found new cause of admiration in the profundity of his mind. His comprehension is vast, his memory capacious and retentive, his discourse is ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... wrote, 'I have lived in such intimacy with all who have had the chief conduct of affairs, and have been so much trusted, and on so many important occasions employed by them, that I have been able to penetrate far into the true secrets of counsels and designs.'[3] He had a retentive memory, and a full share of worldly wisdom. But he was not an artist like Clarendon. His style has none of the sustained dignity, the leisurely evolution, which in Clarendon is so strangely at variance with the speed of composition. All is stated, nothing suggested. ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... were alive to-day he could easily obtain one of the Cecil Rhodes Oxford fellowships, for we are told that he cared only for study and for manly sports, and that he was of an upright character. His memory was so retentive that he could repeat whole books, word for word, after many years, and in more ways than one he had displayed a wonderful precocity. Elizabetta, too, had been given a most liberal and careful education, and her ready intelligence was equalled only by her careful tact and her perfect ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... 1829, and received his education at the public school. He was one of the brightest scholars in his class, learned easily, was fond of books, never wearied of study, and never forgot what he acquired. At the start he was blest with a most marvelous and retentive memory, and a keen sense of the practical side of life. "It was thus," as one of his friends has remarked, "that his school days were profitable to him to a degree not common, and it was thus that his rapidly-growing ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... local histories, not only of New York but also of other American cities. He found a large-scale map of the metropolis and spread it out on the table, true to the indicated compass points. Clustered about this outspread map, the other members of the patrol followed with eager eyes and retentive minds their ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it—soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum—fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity—slow and retentive in cases of deliberation—never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark—never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service—all things as it were with all men—ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian, or ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... myself again. "It is a very uncommon name, and should be easy to recollect." I had often prided myself on possessing a singularly retentive memory, more especially for names and faces, but, upon the present occasion, the more I pondered the matter, the more hazy I became. So I walked on through the sweet, wet grass, racking my brain for a solution of the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... too much alarmed at another; so that the spirit, which we might be said to be conversing with in a dream, was constantly and equally kind and careful; but our powers are not always in the same state of action, not equally attentive too, or retentive of the hints that were given. And, 5. To answer the last question, Why people are not equally supplied? This seemed to be no question; for Providence itself might have some share in the direction of it, and then that ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... it not possible that here Mr. Collier's remarkable memory is too retentive, and that, though second thoughts may be best, first thoughts are sometimes inconveniently remembered to the prejudice of the second?"[N] Here we see a palpable slip of memory or of the pen, by which an old man substituted one word for another of similar import, as many a younger man has done ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... on which the alphabet was printed in very large type, and my attention called to each letter. My fingers, then soft and supple, were not long in tracing the outlines of each character, and, my memory being naturally retentive, I was soon able to distinguish each letter, and give its name as my finger was placed on it. Another card was then given me in smaller type, which I mastered in the same way, and so on till I could ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... the full development of I. glandulosa is a strong, clayey, retentive loam; it does not thrive well in the light shallow soils in the neighborhood of London, except in shady positions. I. Hookeri is a free-flowering perennial, with pointed lanceolate leaves, of a delicate texture, bright green, and very finely toothed. The flowers, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... that few men have been born with the material for self-sufficient contentment more completely within himself than Edward Gibbon. He had every gift which a great scholar should have, an insatiable thirst for learning in every form, immense industry, a retentive memory, and that broadly philosophic temperament which enables a man to rise above the partisan and to become the impartial critic of human affairs. It is true that at the time he was looked upon as bitterly prejudiced in the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... world could have used to great advantage. I had independent means, enough to enable me, as a bachelor, to live like a gentleman; I belonged to one of the oldest and best-descended families in the English untitled aristocracy, had a retentive memory, a strong voice, and could speak in public without embarrassment. A man of the world, in my position, would have found his upward course straight before him. He would simply have made use of the Church as an instrument (it is one of the most ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... I," said Linda. "From the short acquaintance I have with him I should not call him at all imaginative, but he is extremely quick and wonderfully retentive. You have to show him but once from which cactus he can get Victrola needles and fishing hooks, or where to find material ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... when he awoke somewhat late in the afternoon, did not exactly complain of headache, he was free to admit that his faculties were slightly clouded, and that his memory was not to the desired extent retentive of all that passed on the preceding night. Indeed, beyond the fact—which he reiterated with great energy—that 'old Flood, Tory though he was, was a good fellow, an excellent fellow, and had a marvellous bin of port wine,' his son Dick was totally unable to get ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Shakespeare, so far as I could judge, had been acquired through the theatre. The unacted plays were not familiar to him. Few people realize what a person of alert intelligence and retentive memory can learn of the best English literature through the theatre-going habit. Measuring Field's opportunity by my own, during the decade from 1873 to 1883, here is a list of Shakespearian plays he could have ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... a most affecting and amiable light. I scarcely ever felt more charmed with his excellencies, more grateful for his condescension, or more abased at my own unworthiness; but I lament that my heart is so little retentive of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... not be found to have slept upon it, or consulted with an effeminate pillow in point of honour and courage. He strikes when he is hot himself, not when the iron is so which he designs to work upon. His tongue has no retentive faculty, but is always running like a fool's drivel. He cannot keep it within compass, but it will be always upon the ramble and playing of tricks upon a frolic, fancying of passes upon religion, State, and the persons of those that are in present authority, no matter how, to whom, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Ekashrutadhara. This word exhibits the opinion entertained by the Hindoos as to the close connection existing between a powerful intellect and a retentive memory. Such a quality indicates the highest kind of pundit: and it should be recollected that Saraswati is the divinity of wisdom, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... with full springing tides of the invigorating influences of music and magnets both real and artificial, gives such elastic vigour to the nerves, on the one hand, of the male, and on the other, such retentive firmness to the female; and, moreover, all the faculties of the soul being so fully expanded, and so highly illuminated, that it is impossible, in the nature of things, but that strong, beautiful, brilliant, nay, double-distilled children, if I may ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... the faculty working in some special direction. It is memory playing, like Paganini, on one string. No doubt the persons performing the phenomenal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more than they remember. To be able to repeat a hundred lines of verse after a single reading is no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as the hundred lines go. A man might easily fail under such a test, and yet have a good memory; by which I mean a catholic one, and that I imagine to be nearly the rarest of gifts. I have never met more ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... embarrassment at the recollection of his share in the debates on the Royal Annuity Bill, but the Prince did not show an equally retentive memory. His seeming forgetfulness of the past and cordiality in the present did more than reassure, it deeply touched and completely won a man who was himself capable ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... read, if the least handle for this charge should have been given, but no accusation of the kind is preferred. The story of his life shows him to be full of rough candour and honesty, and unlikely to descend to subterfuge, while his great love of reading and his accurate retentive memory would make easy for him a task which ordinary mortals might well regard ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Vivien de St. Martin if those days—hence his glib references to the manners and customs of Laplanders, Caffres, Kamskatchans, and other recondite types of breeding. His imaginative faculty was under the control of an exceptionally strong and retentive memory. One may venture to say, indeed, without danger of exaggeration that his testimonials as regards habitual accuracy of statement have seldom been exceeded. Despite the doctor's unflattering portraits of Frenchmen, M. Babeau admits that his book is one written ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... heroes Scroggins and Turner; and at the opposite end of the table, a Wake-ful one, but a grosser man than either, and something of the levanter: the bald-headed stag on his right goes by the quaint cognomen of the Japan oracle, from the retentive memory he possesses on all sporting and pugilistic events. The old waiter is a picture every frequenter will recognise, and the smoking a dozer no unusual bit of a spree. Here, my dear Bernard, you have before you a true portrait of the celebrated ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... lost upon Lord Monmouth. No one had a more retentive memory, or a more observant mind. And the next day, when he received Mr. Rigby at his morning levee, Lord Monmouth performed this ceremony in the high style of the old court, and welcomed his visitors in bed, he said with imperturbable ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Cryer in his school board electioneering address, 1894, ranges promising pupils in the order of workers, plodders and bright ones. The last are frequently overrated, the memory more quick than retentive. "Wie gewonnen, so zerronnen," "Lightly come, lightly go," mere quickness may prove a will o' the wisp, and may be peculiar to one subject, but the capacity for patient, honest, painstaking work is a vastly more valuable quality, which can be applied ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous
... reasons for every bit of labor he performed, and he had not kept his son in ignorance of them. As they worked together the father had explained to the son what he did, and why he did it, The results of their work spoke for themselves, and Hiram had a retentive memory. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... and into it glad enough we were to tumble! We had no sooner begun to be tolerably comfortable and composed than a grave old gentleman commenced a most furious Philippic against the prevailing studies, politics, and religion of the day—and, in truth, this man evinced a wonderfully retentive memory, and a fair share of powers of argument; bringing everything, however, to the standard of his own times. It was in vain we strove to edge in the great Whig and Tory Reviews of the northern and southern hemispheres! The obdurate ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... them. But what was passing around them? The grand events of a spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress themselves, as the mystical legends of former times had done, upon their memory; besides which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly in those ancient times. Ballads at first, and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were merely recitations, with an ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... a man of wide reading with a retentive, memory. The name brought back instantly to him the remembrance of the sinister reputation of its owner—a notorious buck of the thirties—who had gambled and duelled and steeped himself in drink and debauchery, until even the vile set with whom he consorted had shrunk away ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was remarkably retentive, not only of the contents of books, but of all that great outlying fund of anecdote and story which the quaint and earnest New England life always supplied. There were pictures of peculiar characters, legends ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... so seriously ... the greater part of the evils observed had not been the necessary and unavoidable results of canal irrigation, but were due to interference with the natural drainage of the country, to the saturation of stiff and retentive soils, and to natural disadvantages of site, enhanced by excess of moisture. As regarded the Ganges Canal, they were of opinion that, with due attention to drainage, improvement rather than injury to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of primary decomposers are thoroughly inoculated with microorganisms that can consume cellulose and lignin. Even though it looks like humus, it has not yet fully decomposed. It does have a water-retentive, granular structure that facilitates the presence of air and moisture throughout the mass creating perfect conditions for ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... idle men are apt to be more entertaining than those of busy men. The idler, passing his time in search of amusement, can hardly fail to communicate it when he yields up his store of experiences. Being disengaged, his mind is more observant and more retentive of the by-play of life, which is the only amusing part of it, than that of one of the chief actors can possibly be. Moreover, idlers are the natural confidants of the busy: they are consulted, made useful as go-betweens, entrusted with those little services which, being transient and disconnected, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... read many books and seen much of life, having travelled all over our own country, and visited both Europe and South America; and possessing a retentive memory, fine descriptive powers, a fund of humor, and a decided talent for mimicry, was able, when he chose, to make his conversation exceedingly amusing and interesting, and very instructive. Also, ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... ELLA RODMAN (published by Charles Scribner), is a natural, affectionate, and delightful narrative of early days, purporting to be from a charming old lady, who has both a retentive memory and an enviable gift of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... and as a skilful General posts the cavalry, the infantry, and the light troops, where each of them can act to most advantage; so Antonius drew up his arguments in those parts of his discourse, where they were likely to have the best effect. He had a quick and retentive memory, and a frankness of manner which precluded any suspicion of artifice. All his speeches were, in appearance, the unpremeditated effusions of an honest heart; and yet, in reality, they were preconcerted with so much skill, that the judges were, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... gums in its mouth have a brush-like surface, like a whale's in miniature: it is said to eat small fish. A bony spine rises on its back (I suppose for defence), which is 2-1/2 inches long, and as thick as a quill. They are very retentive of life. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... tongue nor fingers are very retentive. But I shall not say anything to him about it. He would only begin a very long story with a very long face, and I see him far too seldom to tease him with affairs of business or conscience when ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the sacrifice is so useless that it should not be made, and you exclaim, with Basile, "Money! money! I detest it—but I will keep it," assuredly no one will question a generosity so retentive, however barren. It is a virtue which loves to envelop itself in a veil of modesty, especially when it is purely latent and negative. As for you, you will lose no opportunity to proclaim it in the ears of all France from the ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... them; but he gets them from his schoolfellows, or his masters, or his parents, as the case may be. Such as he is in his other relations, such also is he in his school exercises; his mind is observant, sharp, ready, retentive; he is almost passive in the acquisition of knowledge. I say this is no disparagement of the idea of a clever boy. Geography, chronology, history, language, natural history, he heaps up the matter of these studies as treasures for a future ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... Most retentive to her, as it had passed, of Huggo's share in all that episode had been that she from her expostulation with Huggo had not come away with the same satisfaction as seemingly had Harry. She put before the boy ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... shall deal with the use in reasoning of such curves, either actually 'plotted' or roughly imagined. In this chapter I point out, firstly, that they can be easily remembered (partly because our visual memory is extremely retentive of the image made by a black line on a white surface) and that we can in consequence carry in our minds the quantitative facts as to a number of variations enormously beyond the possibility of memory if they were treated as isolated instances; and secondly, that we can by imagining ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... acquired between the ages of ten and eighteen—rules of grammar, strings of vocables, dates, names of towns, rivers, and mountains, mathematical formulas, etc. All depends here on the receptive and retentive powers of the mind. The memory has to be strengthened, without being overtaxed, till it acts almost mechanically. Learning by heart, I believe, cannot be too assiduously practised during the years spent at school. There may have been too much of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... no defiance of conventions in public, though essentially she was quite sufficiently discreet for self-preservation. Also she had a keen little brain, a reckless but good-humored heart and a memory retentive of important trifles. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... own, we sank in a perfect death-like swoon of thoroughly satiated lust, and gradually and imperceptibly fell into the deepest slumber for many hours, locked as we were in each other's arms. Her wonderfully retentive power of cunt held my happy prick a willing prisoner through our long sleep. I awoke first, to find it standing stiff within the charmed circle which even in her sleep was deliciously grasping it with its nervous folds. I passed my hand down to her clitoris, and began fucking her. She heaved ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... grim messenger depart, she pressed her hands tightly over her breast to hide from the quick eye of the miser the violent agitation that convulsed her frame, as the recollection of former days flashed upon her too retentive memory. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... said Mrs. Parry, a hatchet-faced dame with a venomous tongue and a retentive memory, "Morley's fond of children, although he has ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... it is much to my purpose; he is describing the character of a genius truly inclined to philosophy. "It includes," he says, "qualifications rarely united in one single mind, quickness of apprehension and a retentive memory, vivacity and application, gentleness and magnanimity"; to these he adds an invincible love of truth, and consequently of probity and justice. "Such a soul," continues he, "will be little inclined to sensual pleasures, and consequently temperate; a stranger to illiberality and avarice; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... and assimilation, my brain was more a machine-shop than a wareroom; hence capacity of retail dealing was of the smallest. I was not in the least conscious at this time that a large wareroom amply stored by virtue of a retentive memory was not the most needed as an equipment for all the practical affairs of life. I have ever found it necessary to dodge some memories, when there was lack of time to endure ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... Billings intermarried with the Tootings—when the Billings took to cooing, so to speak—a hasty blend of excerpts would be required for the "Epithalamium." So it was all a highly difficult business, needing adaptability, a quick wit, a goodly stock of songs, a retentive memory and every artifice to assist it. Take "Widsith," for example, the 'far-travelled ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... away in a corner of his mind for the moment; the answer would come to him later on. He had a wonderfully retentive mind. Everything which he saw or heard seemed to make its corresponding impression somewhere in his brain; often without his being conscious of it; and these photographic impressions were always there ready for him when he wished to ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... said by his own countrymen to have outdone the government of the Third Empire. His alter ego, Georges Mandel, is endowed with qualities which supplement and correct those of his venerable chief. His grasp of detail is comprehensive and firm, his memory retentive, and his judgment bold and deliberate. A striking illustration of the audacity of his resolve was given in the early part of 1918. Marshal Joffre sent a telegram to President Wilson in Washington, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... ready to lend him books; and as, during the hours when drill and exercise were going on, he had plenty of time to himself, he had got through a very large amount of desultory reading, and, having a retentive memory, knew quite as much as most lads of his age, although the knowledge was of ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... viii., p. 44.), I crave leave to say that I never have met with the verb perceyuer except in Hawes, loc. cit.; and I gave the latest use that I could call to mind of the noun in my paper on that word. Unhappily I never make notes, but rely entirely on a somewhat retentive memory; therefore the instances that occur on the spur of the moment are not always the most apposite that might be selected for the purpose of illustration. If, however, he will take the trouble to refer to a little ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... control, and Mr.—a—Word's share in it without my consent; his service was, I believe, well repaid by my father; and the trouble with me is not that my memory is defective, but rather that it is too retentive. I remember the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of this war, very singular skill is manifested. A keen observer of all that passed before him, aided by a most retentive memory, and a fertile imagination, enabled our pilgrim forefather to gain much knowledge in a short time. He had been engaged, as a private soldier, in the Civil war; and was at the siege of Leicester, when it was taken by Prince Rupert. This ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Next you have the Retentive in the remotest part of the Place, which, like the Records in the Tower, takes Possession of all Matters, as they are removed from the Classes in the Repository, for want of room. These are carefully Lockt, and kept safe, never to be open'd ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... in a soil of clay containing considerable gravel. Such a soil provides for the roots the firmness of which I have spoken, while the gravel insures perfect drainage,—a matter of great importance in Rose-culture. Success cannot be expected in a soil unduly retentive of moisture. Very heavy soils can be lightened by the addition of coarse, sharp sand, old mortar, and cinders. If the location chosen does not furnish perfect drainage, naturally, artificial drainage must be resorted ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... is not sufficient, therefore, in education, to store up knowledge; it is essential to arrange facts so that they shall be ready for use, as materials for the imagination, or the judgment, to select and combine. The power of retentive memory is exercised too much, the faculty of recollective memory is exercised too little, by the common modes of education. Whilst children are reading the history of kings, and battles, and victories; whilst they are learning tables of chronology and lessons ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... paid the penalty of his misdeeds, and I see nothing to be gained by perpetuating them in connection with his own proper name. In all other particulars the foregoing narrative is as true as a tolerably retentive memory has enabled ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... that especially attracted my attention was his wonderfully retentive memory. If we remember the many years he has spent in Africa, deprived of books, we may well think it an uncommon memory that can recite whole poems from Byron, Burns, Tennyson, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... of Ficus deserve to be mentioned, though this catalogue does not claim to be exhaustive. FICUS FASCICULATA, as the title implies, bears its inedible fruit in bundles, branches, trunk, and exposed roots, being alike fertile, and is almost as retentive of life as the cockatoo apple. Opposita is remarkable for varied form of foliage, referred to particularly elsewhere, and for ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... great intellectual quickness, and a retentive memory. The following may be cited as an extraordinary instance of the latter faculty. An old man, a native of La Pax, in Upper Peru, and of unmixed Indian blood, who kept an inn at Curicavi, between Valparaiso and Santiago, could repeat nearly the whole of Robertson's "History of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... plays full seven thousand pieces. In short, he plays every piece that he has ever heard. How almost godlike (it cannot be brought to human comparison) is this retentive, this perfect memory, as relating to all that is musical, or even unmusical, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... when he takes hold of a subject he studies it thoroughly to its conclusion, and is master of all its points. Although Mr. Bishop has never been what may be termed physically robust, he possesses great power of prolonged mental application. And being also endowed with a most remarkably retentive memory, his mind is stored with a very comprehensive knowledge of law. And if there be one faculty of his mind more than another, that gives character to the man, it is his prodigious memory of facts. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... happened that, in my schoolboy days, I had joined a class of young fellows who were learning what is called the "Sarvin' of Mass" and had impressed it so accurately on a pretty retentive memory, that I never forgot it. At length, Ned pulled, out his beads, and bedewed himself most copiously with the holy water. He then shouted out, with a voice which resembled that of a man in an ague fit, "Dom-i-n-us vo-bis-cum?" "Et cum spiritu tuo," I replied, in a husky ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... forced into a temporarily heavy grind, but neither do they suffer from the extremes of indolence and application which are the penalty of the nervous energy of our own race. They are attentive (which the American child is not) but not retentive, and they can keep up a steady, even pull at regular tasks, especially in routine work, at which American children usually rebel. In fact, they prefer routine work to variety, and grow discouraged quickly when they have to puzzle out things for themselves. They will ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... marked influence on his mind or character; indeed they had little opportunity for doing so, for after the first term his attendance at lectures almost entirely ceased. Though never a student, he must have been at all times a considerable reader; he had a retentive memory and quick understanding; he read what interested him; absorbed, understood, and retained it. He left the university with his mind disciplined indeed but not drilled; he had a considerable knowledge of languages, law, literature, and history; ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... peaceful man was certainly marvelous. The leading of most of the hymns in the social meetings was a very small proportion of it. Whenever he found a psalm, a hymn, or a chorus that struck a chord in his devout heart he laid it carefully away in his retentive memory, and it was instantly called up when he wanted ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... the ox, the dog, the monkey, etc., show the emotions of anger, hate, fear, love, and grief so plainly that "he who runs may read." That these animals possess these emotions is a fact which hardly needs demonstration. They likewise have very retentive memories, sometimes treasuring up an injury for days, months, and years, until an opportunity arrives for them to "get even," thus showing that they ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... books bring a stirring of the sap and a fluttering of the susceptible heart, "Returned Empty" comes as a languorous relief from the stolid realism of most present-day writing. One reads it and swoons. And on opening one's eyes again, one hears old family retainers murmuring in soft retentive accents: "Here, sip some of this, my lord; 'twill bring the roses back to those cheeks and the strength to those poor limbs." It's elegant, that's all there is ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... have to remark, said Campuzano, is, that, as I was very attentive, my apprehension very sensitive, and my memory very retentive (thanks to the many raisins and almonds I had swallowed), I got it all by heart, and wrote it down, word for word, the next day, without attempting to colour or adorn it, or adding or suppressing anything to make it ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... origin of the famed statue had defied the most recondite searchers of the past. For the following we are indebted to the retentive memory of that eminently respected authority, the "oldest inhabitant." The statue of Neptune, says the octogenarian, Robert Urquhart, so well remembered at the foot of Mountain Hill, was presented to the landlord of the hotel, George Cossar, formerly butler ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... to his turn to speak, he said: 'My tale is but short, although story-telling is my profession. I am the son of a schoolmaster, who, perceiving that I was endowed with a very retentive memory, made me read and repeat to him most of the histories with which our language abounds; and when he found that he had furnished my mind with a sufficient assortment, he turned me out into the world under the garb ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... extracted small loans from most of his male acquaintances, rarely repaying the same. He had a tendency to forget that he had borrowed half-a-crown here to pay a cab and ten shillings there to settle up for a dinner; and his memory was not much more retentive of larger sums. This made his friends somewhat wary. The consequence was that the great treasure-hunt was a failure from start to finish. He got friendly smiles. He got honeyed apologies. He got earnest assurances of ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... a very dull boy. My memory was not retentive, and I comprehended ideas and formulas expressed by others in a very imperfect manner. I needed a careful, judicious, and patient teacher, who understood the character of my mind, and who was able to come down to it with instruction in the simplest and clearest ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... that for some time nothing else is present to the mind and the image of the flower is seen and realized in all its details, is most efficacious for producing mental calm and alertness. By such simple exercises the mind learns how to rest and refresh itself. Its quickness of apprehension and its retentive power are considerably increased, for words and facts imprinted on it when by the suppression of its ordinary activities it has thus been made a tabula rasa ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... alert and retentive mind had seized, long ago, on Rowlatt's recommendation at the Little Bear Inn, and he had developed, perhaps half consciously, a half sense of humour. A whole sense, however, is not congruous with the fervid beliefs and soaring ambitions of eighteen. Your sense of humour, that delicate percipience ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... showing a depraved excretion, and flowing sometimes twice a month, the cause is in the blood, which stirs up the expulsive faculty of the womb, or else in the whole body, and is frequently occasioned by the person's diet, which increases the blood too much, making it too sharp or too hot. If the retentive faculty of the womb be weak, and the expulsive faculty strong, and of a quick sense, it brings them forth the sooner. Sometimes they flow sooner by reason of a fall, stroke or some violent passion, which the parties themselves ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Smith once rode several miles in a carriage, together, to a town where both were to make addresses. Jones was quite an orator; Smith had a very retentive memory. Jones asked Smith about his speech, but Smith professed not to have fully decided upon his topic, and in turn asked Jones the same question. Jones gave a full outline of his speech, Smith getting him to elaborate it by judicious inquiries ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... reward—we employ to exhort us to practise virtues, which, if we had been rightly educated, we should have practised from our earliest youth with as much facility as we read or write. If a child is to learn grammar, let him commence, every one will say, when young, while his memory is most retentive. If we are to teach him those principles which are to shape his destiny in life, and have their home in the heart, should we wait till it is least susceptible of impression? It cannot be denied that too much indifference prevails on this subject. We are ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... men received their first incentive to ambition and industry and perseverence by reading—when their minds were immature, but fresh and retentive—of the life and achievements of Benjamin Franklin and such other ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... never employ artists' models—partly because his chic drawing, like Sir John Tenniel's, came natural to his genius, and his memory was extraordinarily retentive, and partly because when he began to draw for Punch, and for a long while after, it was unheard-of for black-and-white men on comic papers to do anything so seriously academic. But though he said that he had not in his life made half-a-dozen drawings from Nature, he was always sketching "bits" ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... castles—just see the mountains and balloons, the tower in the distance. You could study palmistry and occult laws to fine advantage. It has become so respectable, too, you know. Yet few do excel, though many attempts are made. Try it, you are very susceptible to every personality; you have a very retentive memory with large formative powers. Just the requisites with your mentality for doing good to poor humanity. As a ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... water-table should be at least two feet from the surface. If by chance this comes naturally, so much the better, but otherwise the land must be tile-drained. Sloping land is by no means always well drained, many hillsides having a subsoil so impervious or so retentive of moisture that under-drainage is a necessity. The texture of the land is usually improved so greatly by good drainage that the grower has little need to rely on the clemency of the season in carrying on ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... which will yield little fruit. Decomposing sandstone, and slate, known in Jamaica as rotten rock, mixed with vegetable mould, is one of the most favorable soils. The subsoil should be also carefully examined by a boring augur, for a stiff moist clay, or marly bottom retentive of moisture, is particularly injurious to the plant. A dark, rusty-colored sand, or a ferruginous marl on a substratum of limestone, kills the tree in a few years. In virgin lands, after the wood has been felled and cleared, the land is lined off into rows of from six to seven ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... merchandise—that is to say, of our growth—would not be touched abroad. They were as much afraid of our goods as they were of our people; and indeed they had reason: for our woollen manufactures are as retentive of infection as human bodies, and if packed up by persons infected, would receive the infection and be as dangerous to touch as a man would be that was infected; and therefore, when any English ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... for he was naturally inquisitive, and desirous of the conversation of those from whom any information was to be obtained, but by no means solicitous to improve those opportunities that were sometimes offered of raising his fortune; and he was remarkably retentive of his ideas, which, when once he was in possession of them, rarely forsook him; a quality which could never be ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... indifferent, popular and abstruse, from the novels of Sylvanus Cobb to Euclid's Elements, both of which I found (to my almost equal wonder) he had managed to peruse: he was taking stock by the way, of the people, the products, and the country, with an eye unusually observant and a memory unusually retentive; and he was collecting for himself a body of magnanimous and semi-intellectual nonsense, which he supposed to be the natural thoughts and to contain the whole duty of the born American. To be pure-minded, to be patriotic, to get culture and money with both hands and with the same irrational ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Life, as in things concerning Art, I was not a predetermined Radical. There was a great deal of piety in my nature and I was of a collecting, retentive disposition. Only gradually, and step by step, was I led by my impressions, the incidents I encountered, and my development, to break with many a tradition to which I had clung to the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... note-book or journal, and as my memory is not a retentive one I have allowed much to escape which I should now vainly attempt to recall. Some things must, however, have made a vivid and durable impression on my mind, as fragments remain, after the lapse of years, far more distinct than occurrences of much more recent ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... fell in the Boer War in 1901. If he had not been a great soldier, Colonel Laurie would have been a great historian. His knowledge of history, more especially of military history, was profound, and his memory was singularly retentive. He had, moreover, a very sound judgment in the marshalling of facts. He had written with a pen of light the history of his regiment, which he loved, and which loved him, and on which in life and in death he had shed ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... little hope of passing, for most of her subjects were weak, but she meant to make an effort to try to pick up some of her lost ground. Her old enemies, Latin and Chemistry, still often baffled her, and her memory was only moderately retentive. She could not honestly believe that so far as her work was concerned she was any credit to the school. Games were another matter, however, and so long as they did not seriously interfere with her preparation for the matriculation, she meant ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... eager, and retentive, too, I daresay," he said; "but much will depend on whether he ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... arrangements stand unaltered," replied the Spaniard. "My directions were that you should repeat to me the order of your instructions and that I should judge for His Grace whether or not your memory is retentive. There must ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... watch, I found that it was nearly two o'clock—he had informed me that he dined at four—and, not to detain the reader with these details, recurring to a very retentive memory, I found myself, two hours afterward, seated at table with ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... this subject, I wish to express my thanks to Mr. S.A. Goddard for his assistance. His great age, his acute powers of perception, and his marvellously retentive and accurate memory, combine to make him, probably, the only living competent witness of some of the circumstances I have been able to detail; while the ready manner in which he responded to my request for information merits my ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... water-line is backed by swelling ridges, here open and green- grassed, there spotted with islets of close and shady trees. Mangrove, that horror of the African voyager, shines by its absence; and the soil is not mud, but humus based on gravels or on ruddy clays, stiff and retentive. The formation, in fact, is everywhere that of Eyo or Yoruba, the goodly region lying west of the lower Niger, and its fertility must result from the abundant water supply of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... expression, it becomes, after a time, permanently fixed. The nervous system, however, possesses the power of modifiability to a marked degree, even a single impression sufficing to make striking modification. This is very important in study, being the basis for the retentive powers ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... treasuring their most weighty thoughts, and making the wisdom of the wise his own. Even under the harsh discipline of his former instructors, he had early given promise of distinction; and with favorable influences his mind rapidly developed. A retentive memory, a lively imagination, strong reasoning powers, and untiring application, soon placed him in the foremost rank among his associates. Intellectual discipline ripened his understanding, and aroused an activity of mind and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... with a mixture of contempt for my want of taste, and astonishment at my presumption. But before the reply had time to burst out from lips, at no time too retentive, I was told, that at the end of one week more I should be suffered to take my way; that week being devoted to a round of especial entertainments in honour of my brother's election; the whole to be wound up by that most preposterous of all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... allowance for the fact that most of the poet's autobiographic sketches are emphatically "Dichtang und Wahrheit," we can believe that he was an omnivorous reader—"I read eating, read in bed, read when no one else reads"—and, having a memory only less retentive than Macaulay's, acquired so much general information as to be suspected of picking it up from Reviews. He himself declares that he never read a Review till he was eighteen years old—when, he himself wrote one, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Berwick in Lothair, says that he "could always, when necessary, sparkle with anecdote or blaze with repartee." The former performance is considerably easier than the latter. Indeed, when a man has a varied experience, a retentive memory, and a sufficient copiousness of speech, the facility of story-telling may attain the character of a disease. The "sparkle" evaporates while the "anecdote" is left. But, though what Mr. Pinto called "Anecdotage" is deplorable, a repartee is always ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... faith to heretics, are as necessary parts of that religion, as transubstantiation and the pope's supremacy[33]." Andrew Marvel wittily remarks of the pope's claim, "He has, indeed, of late, been somewhat more retentive than formerly as to his faculty of disposing of kingdoms, the thing not having succeeded well with him in some instances, but he lays the same claim still, continues the same inclinations, and though velvet-headed hath the more itch to be pushing. And, however, in order to any occasion ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... outstepped the limits of propriety. My aunt, who lived to the age of 105, had been blessed with four husbands, and her name had twice been changed to that of Hussey: she was of a most delightful disposition, of a retentive memory, highly entertaining, and liberally communicative; and to her I have frequently been obliged for an interesting anecdote. She was, after the death of her second husband, Mr. Hussey, a fashionable sacque and ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... These birds have retentive memories. A parrot that belonged to a lady recognised a black servant after three years' absence. Another bird was so fierce that no one in the house liked to touch it, but it would allow a lady visitor to handle it with impunity. It was at last given away, as its ill temper seemed ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... seen but once or twice. When employed in dictation, he would resume the thread of his discourse without being prompted, after the most vexatious interruptions. His judgment was as sound as his memory was retentive; it was almost infallible,—no one was ever known to have been misled by it. He had a remarkable analytical power, and also the power of generalization. He was a very learned man, and his Commentaries ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... age. She has the most ardent love of true religion and of the best kind of literature. The constitution of her mind is exempt from female weakness, and she is endued with a masculine power of application. No apprehension can be quicker than her's, no memory more retentive. French and Italian she speaks like English; Latin, with fluency, propriety, and judgement; she also spoke Greek with me, frequently, willingly, and moderately well. Nothing can be more elegant than her handwriting, whether in the Greek or Roman character. In music she is very skilful, but does ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... in, and you press forward and find out with great certainty and little loss of time. The best readers of serious matter have a similar eagerness to discover what the author has to say; they get the author's question, and press on to find his answer. Such readers are both quick and retentive. The dawdling reader, who simply spends so much time and covers so many pages, in the vague hope that something will stick, does not remember the point because he never got the point, and never got it because ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... arts, crafts, games, sports, and the like, must needs have subtle and accurate knowledge behind it; but the possessor of such knowledge is seldom able to impart it with any approach to lucidity. On the other hand, it frequently happens that one who has a retentive memory is able to impart information glibly and correctly, without possessing any real knowledge of the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... Reynolds, his studies of types are the result of an exceptional power of observation coupled with a very retentive memory. His keen eye notes—often unconsciously, as he admits—the small eccentricities by which character is revealed; his sense of humour emphasises them, and his memory retains them. As a result, when he essays to portray a type, there rises before his mental ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... speech as an indication to our government of what was likely to be the course of the Emperor, I determined to retain it in my mind; and, although my verbal memory has never been retentive, I was able, on returning to our legation, to write the whole of it, word for word. In the form thus given, it was transmitted to our State Department, where, a few years since, when looking over sundry ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... much, so he felt a little encouraged, and taking Miss Clarissa's advice, set the book open on the table and began learning what he would have to say, while going on with his toilet. He had a really surprisingly retentive memory, and picked up a good bit even ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... name. He was not very bright, and he used to be sadly bullied by the crew; but as I was strong, could and did protect him, and his gratitude won my regard. He had been tolerably well educated; and being fond of reading, with a retentive memory, he possessed a good deal of information. Left an orphan, without a friend in the world, he had come to sea; and quitting his ship at Charleston, he had entered on board the Pocahuntas. I mention these three of my shipmates for reasons which will hereafter be seen. I had ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... drink: but the principal feature in him was lightness of heart; he was always singing. His voice was very fine and powerful. When in the service he used to be summoned to sing to the captain and officers, and was the delight of the forecastle. His memory was retentive, and his stock of songs incredible, at the same time, he seldom or ever sang more than one or two stanzas of a song in the way of quotation, or if apt to what was going on, often altering the words ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... clear head and an appetite undiminished by punch; and probably she was the only one at Morristown of whom this could be said. The morning light did not break for her on aching eyelids and a brain at once too retentive of the boasts of the small hours and too sensitive to the perils of the day to come. Colonel John had scarcely passed away under guard, old Darby had scarcely made his first round—with many an ominous shake of the head—the slatternly serving-boys had scarcely risen ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... governing the qualifying verb 'casts.'" Thus, as we walked, I proceeded to give her a definition of the various parts of speech with their relation one to another, and found her to be, on the whole, very quick and of a retentive memory. Encouraged thus, I plunged into my subject whole-heartedly and was discussing the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs when she checked me in ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... wide open. I could plainly see its terrible fangs and poison glands. Then, holding its head close up to his lips, he injected the dark saliva into its throat, and once more flung it to the ground. Up to this time he had used no violence—nothing that would have killed a creature so retentive of life as a snake; and I still expected to see the reptile make its escape. Not so, however. It made no effort to move from the spot, but lay stretched out in loose irregular folds, without any perceptible motion beyond a slight ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... vigorous native intellect sought information wherever it could be obtained with limited means and opportunities, and overcame almost insuperable obstacles. His quick perception and powers of observation and reflection, and his retentive memory were remarkable; his judgment was good, his mental grasp and comprehension equal to any emergency, his intentions were always honest, and his skill and tact, with a determination to always maintain the right, begot confidence and made him successful and great. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... next hour Detective-inspector Hawke was very busy. He made no written notes. He relied solely upon his marvellous retentive memory, and it was not long before he was in full possession of the facts of ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... In India and Japan merchants are an inferior class; and loss of self-respect reacts unfavourably on the moral sense. Ingratitude is a vice attributed to Bengalis by people who have done little or nothing to elicit the corresponding virtue. As a matter of fact their memory is extremely retentive of favours. They will overlook any shortcomings in a ruler who has the divine gift of sympathy, and serve him with devotion. Macaulay has branded them with cowardice. If the charge were true, it was ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... is hardy on dry soils when the winter is of only average severity. But on retentive soils, which are most favourable to the production of fine heads, a severe winter will destroy the plantations unless they have some kind of protection. The usual course of procedure is to cut down the stems and large leaves without ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Winsor have shown us what a librarian ought to be,—the organizing head, the vigilant guardian, the seeker's index, the scholar's counsellor? His work is not merely that of administration, manifold and laborious as its duties are. He must have a quick intelligence and a retentive memory. He is a public carrier of knowledge in its germs. His office is like that which naturalists attribute to the bumble-bee,—he lays up little honey for himself, but he conveys the fertilizing ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Let us, for example, go back quite beyond the invention of printing and try to imagine a man who had read all the rolls destroyed in the Library of Alexandria by successive burnings. (Some reckon the number of these MSS at 700,000.) Suppose, further, this man to be gifted with a memory retentive as Lord Macaulay's. Suppose lastly that we go to such a man and beg him to repeat to us some chosen one of the fifty or seventy lost, or partially lost, plays of Euripides. It is incredible that ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... varieties, as soon as the new order of things has been fully established, and free, intelligent labor has taken the place of the drudging, dull toil of the slave. It is particularly fond of warm, southern exposures, with light limestone soil, and it would be useless to plant it on soil retentive of moisture. Bunch long, large shouldered and compact; berry medium, black, with blue bloom—"bags of wine," as Downing fitly calls them; skin thin, sweet flesh, without pulp, juicy and high flavored, never ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... worst my mouth, which was somewhat weak. I do not think, however, that any one would have guessed by looking at me as I then appeared at the age of seven and twenty, that I was an exceedingly hard-working man with extraordinary powers of observation and a really retentive memory. ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... out made him for the nonce refrain from that vengeance of abuse which his education as a Dublin Jackeen well qualified him to inflict. But he put down the man's face in his retentive memory, and made up his mind to pay ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... of 1666; he must often have gazed in childish horror at those awful mounds beneath which hundreds of human bodies lay huddled together,—rich and poor, high and low, scoundrel and saint,—sharing one common bed at last. His retentive memory must have stored away at least the outline of those hideous images, so effectively recombined many years later by means of his powerful ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... Quixote, as he seemed to have a retentive memory, to describe and portray to her the beauty and features of the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, for, judging by what fame trumpeted abroad of her beauty, she felt sure she must be the fairest creature in the world, nay, in all ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... keep his children under his own eye, till they could discern between good and evil; so, with the assistance of his generous master, my father ventured on a small farm on his estate. At those years, I was by no means a favourite with anybody. I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic idiot piety. I say idiot piety, because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... memory. I kept memoranda during my whole service, but was compelled to leave every thing when I attempted escape, as such papers then found in my possession would have secured my certain death; but in all material things I can promise the accuracy which a retentive memory secures. ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... he had not witnessed. His memory, or, if you will, his invention, was never at fault; and from the siege of Seringapatam to the battle of Corunna he was perfect. Besides this, he possessed a mind retentive of even the most trifling details of his profession,—from the formation of a regiment to the introduction of a new button, from the laying down of a parallel to the price of a camp-kettle, he knew it all. To be sure, he had served in the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever |
