Lewisburg chronicle. [volume] (Lewisburg, Pa.) 1850-1859, 1855-06-08
Is there any Forgetting?

called upon to attend, on their death. beds,
who for forty, fifty, and sixty years had
lost the use of their native tongue, the
long suspended faculty would be recalled d
by approaching death, ,and they would talk,
gray, and sing in Swedish. DR.. johnson,
also, when it came his turn to die, spoke
not in the march Of his own majestic
rhctoric-passcd by even the cadences of
those Latin hymnsin which he once had so
much loved to dwell-but was heard with
bis sinking voice muttering ehild's pray
er which lie had learned on his mother
knee. Strange, indeed, is the providence,
and yet so wisely Illustrative of the alb
sence of time as an clement in the divine
economy, which thus brings together the
two extreme points of human history
birth and death. This same remarkable
quality is thus touched upon by Coleridge.
"In a Roman Catholic town in Gcrma-
ny, young woman Of four or five and
twenty, who could neither read nor write,
was seized with nervous fever, during
which she cont inucd necessarily talking
Latin, Greek and Hebrew, in very pom-
pous tones, and with most distinct enun-
citation. The case had attracted the par
ticular attention of q young physician, and
I,- L. tnf~ nh al
/ cists visited the town, and examined the
case on the spot. Sheets full of her raw
ings were taken down from her mouth, and
were found coherent and ineligible each
for itself, but with little or no connection
with each other. All trick or conspiracy
was out of the question. Not only had
the young woman ever been a harmless,
simple creature, but she was evidently Ia
boring with a nervous fever. In town
in which she had been u resident fer many
years as servant, in different families,
no solution presented itself The young
physician, however determined to trace her
past life step by step; for the patient her
self was incapable of returning rational
answer. He at length succeeded in dis
covering the place where her parents had
lived ; Travelled thither found them dead,
but an uncle surviving, and from him
learned that the patient had been chari-
tably taken in by an old Protestant pas
tor at nine years old, and had remained
with him some years, even until the old
mans death. With great difficulty he
discovered niece of the pastor, of whom
anxious inquiries were made concerning
his habits, and the solution Of the pheno-
mcnon was soon obtained. For it appear
ed that it had been the old mans custom
for years to walk up and down a passage
of his his house into which the kitchen
door opened, to read to himself with loud
voice out of his favoritc books. \ con-
siderable number of these were STILL in the
niece's possession, and the physician sue
ceeded III identifying SO many passages
with these taken down at the young wo-
mans bedside, that no doubt could re-
main in any rational mind concerning the
true origin of the impressions made on her
nervous system.
"This authenticated case furnishes both
proof and instance, that relics of sensation
may exist for an indefinite time in latent
state, in the very same order in which
they were originally impressed; and as
VIC cannct raticnally suppose the fevcrish
state of the brain, to act in any other way
than as stimulus, this fact (and it would
not be difficult to adducc several Of the
same kind) contributes to make it even
probable thoughts are in themselves i'm
perishablc, and that if the intcllig igible fa-
Guilty should be rendered more comprehen-
sive, it would require only different and
apportioncd organization-he body &C.
lestial, instead of Tile body terrestias-to
bring before every human soul the collec-
tive experience Of its whole past existence.
And this-this, per-chance, is the dread
book of judgment, in whose mysterious
hieroglyphics every idle word is recorded !.
Yes, in the very nature Of a living spirit,
it may be more possible that heaven and
earth should pass away, than that single
thought, should he loosened or LOST
D-.eIuTori,u