The rules hereafter given must be carefully studied and every example painstakingly examined. After studying my formulas let the pupil endeavour in _each case_ to find a better one himself. If the pupil acts on my advice, he will know how to be always _sure_ to think of the needful related or including facts for finding analytic date words, phrases, or sentences.
The different processes for dealing with dates or numbers may be classified as follows:--
(1) _Cases where the name of the person, fact, or event gives its date_; as, Birth of the colored orator and politician Frederick { D}ou{ g}lass (18)17. This kind of a case is of rare occurrence, and it would be like the charlatanry which has disgraced many former memory systems to allow the pupil to suppose that it frequently happens. A glance at the event, word, or description will quickly tell him if it represents the necessary figures, and if it do not, he must resort to an analytic date word, or phrase, or sentence, whichever he finds most suitable for him. No one figure alphabet contains the advantages of all others. Each has special advantages in special cases. Whatever figure alphabet, however, is used, the main thing about it is to master it thoroughly.
(2) _Cases where a significant or analytic word or phrase expresses the date or number._ "I{ l}l-u{ s}a{ g}e" expresses the date of the death of Columbus in 1506, as he died in great neglect. The impetuous pupil says: "How can I be sure that this phrase applies to Columbus? Would it not apply to any one who had been ill-used?" Certainly not. It applies only to an ill-used man whose date (birth or death, &c.) was in 1506. If he knows of some other man who was greatly ill-used and who died in 1506, then he must use another analytic phrase for that man. See next paragraph.
Six distinguished persons were born in 1809, yet the date of the birth of each is easily fixed: Darwin, whose principal work was called "Origin of Species;" Gladstone, noted for his vigorous eloquence; Lincoln, who was conspicuous as a binder together of separated States; Tennyson, who was chosen as Poet-Laureate, and who was born at Somersby, England; Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who early displayed a musical genius, and whose first oratorio was called "St. Paul;" Elizabeth Barrett Browning [_née_ Elizabeth Barrett], whose poems are distinguished for their subjectivity. The analytic formulas for these different persons born in the same year, 1809, may each differ from the others, thus: