Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-18

perience and anxiety of the preceding "a
hours had aged him ten years. He seemed
to have turned grayer and to have lost the
gentle expression usual to him. He recog-
nized his partners at once and called them
by name, and through this contact with ia
miliar faces remembered his own. What
memory he had left seemed to be solely
through his eyes. And, if you can call that
I memory, it is all he has to-day.
The Story Kept Secret.
"Weli, they took him back to the office
and telegraphed his wife that he was there
and was all right and would be home to din
ner. She does not know to this day of that
day lost in the streets of New York and oi
that night in the station house. Nor does
her husband, for that matter.
''The gentleman's doctor says that il ID
the most singular case he ever came across
in his extended practice. The man seems to
retain his naturally fine mind in all re-
spects as perfect as ever it was. Only in
this particular faculty does it differ from the
minds OF well-educated business people.
But in this respect it is an absolute blank.
l say absolute because what man sees is
really not matter of memory, and in our
daily habits we do many things automatic
ally. as man walks in his sleep without an
effort of memory.
A Very Simple Test.
''To further illustrate my meaning, let
me remark that in this case you can write
your name on a sheet of white paper and
show 1t to him-but turn that sheet upside
down, even in his presence and right before
him, and he cannot repeat the name. It is
the simplest test OF memory, perhaps, that
could be suggested. Another thing. I said
he could tell the street at which to get off
the cars, while he couldn't remember the
number of the street. Yet, if you drew his
attention away from the street so that he
couldn't see the familiar landmarks he
wouldn't know where he was.
"A good many efforts have been made to
reawaken this dormant faculty, but thus far
without satisfactory results He is natur-
ally somewhat sensitive about his failing
and shows growing irritation toward those
who try experiments with him. Terrible?
Well. 1 should say it was, at least to us who
love to dwell upon the beautiful and roman
tic days of childhood and young manhood.
Yet it is not nearly SO terrible as it seems to
us.
What the Loss Means.
s"If it came suddenly and without warn
ing it would be thus terrible, just as sudden
blindness, deafness or dumbness might be
terrible. When man grows gradually
blind or deaf bit by bit, day by day, year by
year, by graduations SO slow as to be imper-
ceptible, it is not so awfully hard to bear.
Plenty of people are undergoing that all
around us. To have your memory destroyed
by single blow, wiped out absolutely, as
you might rub the figures from the slate, as
it were by the swoop of the hand-that
would be terrible.
"The idea of not being able to remember
the time when you played marbles, the
school and college days and friendship, your
early loves and courtship, your children
who have lived and died, even the names of
those who are anxiously awaiting your re-
turn home at night, seems terrible enough
when you fully comprehend what such loss
means. But if this loss is but a more rapid
and certain daily growth of what comes to
most of us before we reach the brink of the
grave-well, what is the difference? Only
the degree of forgetfulness and the time OF
life in which it strikes usp'
CHARLES T. MURRAY.