Most people, perhaps, can recall the enjoyments of the past much more vividly than the sufferings.

On the other hand, there seem to be some who find the retention of the latter the easier of the two.

This fact should not be forgotten in reading the narrative of early hardships which some recent autobiographies have given us.
Not only does our idea of the past become inexact by the mere decay and disappearance of essential features, it becomes positively incorrect through the gradual incorporation of elements that do not properly belong to it.

Sometimes it is easy to see how these extraneous ideas get imported into our mental representation of a past event.

Suppose, for example, that a man has lost a valuable scarf-pin.