Try to memorize words that are spoken to you in conversation--a few sentences, or even one, at a time. You will find that the effort made to fasten the sentence on your memory will result in a concentration of the attention on the words of the speaker. Do the same thing when you are listening to a preacher, actor or lecturer. Pick out the first sentence for memorizing, and make up your mind that your memory will be as wax to receive the impression and as steel to retain it. Listen to the stray scraps of conversation that come to your ears while walking on the street, and endeavor to memorize a sentence or two, as if you were to repeat it later in the day. Study the various tones, expressions and inflections in the voices of persons speaking to you--you will find this most interesting and helpful. You will be surprised at the details that such analysis will reveal. Listen to the footsteps of different persons and endeavor to distinguish between them--each has its peculiarities. Get some one to read a line or two of poetry or prose to you, and then endeavor to remember it. A little practice of this kind will greatly develop the power of voluntary attention to sounds and spoken words. But above everything else, practice repeating the words and sounds that you have memorized, so far as is possible--for by so doing you will get the mind into the habit of taking an interest in sound impressions. In this way you not only improve the sense of hearing, but also the faculty of remembering.
If you will analyze, and boil down the above remarks and directions, you will find that the gist of the whole matter is that one should _actually use, employ and exercise_ the mental faculty of hearing, actively and intelligently. Nature has a way of putting to sleep, or atrophying any faculty that is not used or exercised; and also of encouraging, developing and strengthening any faculty that is properly employed and exercised. In this you have the secret. Use it. If you will listen well, you will hear well and remember well that which you have heard.
The phase of memory connected with the remembrance or recollection of names probably is of greater interest to the majority of persons than are any of the associated phases of the subject. On all hands are to be found people who are embarassed by their failure to recall the name of some one whom they feel they know, but whose name has escaped them. This failure to remember the names of persons undoubtedly interferes with the business and professional success of many persons; and, on the other hand, the ability to recall names readily has aided many persons in the struggle for success. It would seem that there are a greater number of persons deficient in this phase of memory than in any other. As Holbrook has said: "The memory of names is a subject with which most persons must have a more than passing interest.... The number of persons who never or rarely forget a name is exceedingly small, the number of those who have a poor memory for them is very large. The reason for this is partly a defect of mental development and partly a matter of habit. In either case it may be overcome by effort.... I have satisfied myself by experience and observation that a memory for names may be increased not only two, _but a hundredfold_."