Lincoln's Memory and Rhetoric

[RJNorton]

In Lincoln In The Telegraph Office David Homer Bates wrote:

"On one occasion when in the office with Lincoln alone, he began to talk of the functions of the eye and brain when one was reading aloud from a printed page. He said that in his boyhood days he had come across a book in which it was stated that as each letter of the alphabet and each word or sentence appeared before the eye, it was pictured upon the retina so that each particular word could be spoken aloud at the exact moment when its printed form in the volume was reflected upon the eye. He discoursed at some length upon this marvel, remarking upon the curious fact that the eye is capable of receiving simultaneously several distinct impressions or a series of impressions constantly changing as one continues to read across the page, and that these numerous and sometimes radically different impressions are communicated from eye to brain and then back to the vocal organs by means of the most delicate nerves; for instance, said he, the eye may rest at the same instant not only upon a single letter of the alphabet, but upon a series of letters forming a given word, and upon a moving procession of words in a sentence, and not only that, but the resultant record of all these numerous and different impressions is translated by the brain into thought and sent back; telegraphed as it were, to the organs of speech, each organ selecting its own particular message, the whole sentence then being spoken aloud even while the eye is still resting upon the printed page. The skilled accountant casts up a long column of figures as fast as his eye moves down the page, and at the instant he reaches the end of his column his ready fingers jot down the total. In other words, he added, communications are being transmitted continuously and simultaneously in both directions between the outer and inner senses. He likened this mysterious, instantaneous and twofold operation to the telegraph, although as regards the dual process it should be remembered that the invention of duplex telegraphy was not brought into use until more than ten years after this interesting discourse of Lincoln in the presence of his solitary auditor."