The record-union., 1896-02-29

as he reads, in your early childhood.
In that case, of course, it would have
been conscious mental possession at
the time, but many of the conscious
mental possessions of early childhood
become so obliterated during the Pc
riod of rapid physical and mental
growth as to lose all connection with
the memory. at least under normal
conditions. / exclude the suggestion
that you might have read a transla-
ton at this early period, for friend in
the city who is probably the best in
formed man living in such matters as
sures me that no translation of the
work was in existence. He is certain
of this, as publishing house with
which is he is connected contemplated
its translation in 1888 and made an
| exhaustive examinH ton.
Again the clue may possibly lie
among the phenomena of sonambu-
lism. That you could have read the
book yourself while in a somnambu-
| listic condition, is of course excluded
by your ignorance of French, but the
possibility remains-yery slight, OF
| course, but we must reject no possi-
bility whatever in this queSt-that in
such condition you may have placed
yourself where you could overhear the
book read by someone who, for what
ever reason, was putting it into Eng
lish as he went along.
Lastly, it is not, perhaps, beyond
the range of possibility that you wrote
the story under the influence of hyp-
motto suggestion. In that case, OF
course, the question of motive rises
into prominence, since the hypnotic
influence must have been too long con-
tinued to have arisen from any Whim
of the moment, and the harm likely to
result to you would have been SO evident
to the hypnotist that nothing short of
intense hatred could have prompted
him in his work. These three lines of
explanation have suggested them
selves to my mind, and it remains for
us to weigh their comparative proba-
bility. Is there any one of them which
you can eliminate in the beginning?
"The first I answered, may safely
be discarded. / am so thoroughly in
formed as to the facts of my early child
hood that l feel certain of it's impossi-
hility. I was an only child and my
mother died in my infancy. My father,
a physician, almost Immediately took
position as a medical missionary, and
for ten years he and two others, also in
missionary service, were the only Eng
lish-speaking persons I saw He taught
me to read, and as had little else to do
while he and the others were busy with
their work, there was not book about
the mission, aside from a few medical
treatises, which / could not understand,
that !. did not know from cover to cover
1 ,I,4 I, hy14a ar11x
that but my father was the only one of
the three who could have read French
book had it been there, and the charac-
ter of the romance in question is such
that under no circumstances would he
have read 1T in my hearing when / was
so young. Indeed, it was his antipathy
to French literature III general that
caused the French language to be left
out of my education, as know from his
own lips. After my return to America
adopted it as a rigid rule to to make
and preserve notes OH every work of
fiction which I should read or hear read.
That rule was never broken until after
my trouble occurred. These notes are
all in my possession to-day and there is
no trace of any such book among them"
well, I must admit that you have
left absolutely no loophole in that direc-
tion," he said slowly, after moment
of deep thoughtfulness. I'VE may as
well pass to the next theory at once.
Are you aware that at any period of
your life you have been subject to SOM
nambulism?"
IF so, it has been entirely without
my knowledge" replied.
uaf If might bn One NAV
easily fail TO detect somnambulism for
himself, if the information is not i'm
parted to him by others. Now let us
suppose for a moment, that such is
your case; has there been any time in
your life, so far as you know, when any,
one was in the habit of reading aloud
in the vicinity of your sleeping-room,
on a piazza, for instance, where the
sound might lead you to go to your
window and listen, although uncon-
scious? Such an occurrence could
easily be paralleled by well-attested
cases, and the reproduction, under pa
biological conditions, of what you had
heard offers no insuperable objection.
.I can think of no such time except
during the few weeks IN Tennessee be-
fore the mysterious composition of the
story occurred. 1t is a fact, now that
come to think of it, that my room in the
hotel overlooked a small porch, one
story below, and a little to one side,
upon which some of the guests, a
mother and two daughters from Mobile,
T believe, often read aloud in the even
ing. by the light from the window of
their own room"
'sThis looks exceedingly promising,
he exclaimed eagerly Educated ladies
along the Gulf are very apt to know
more or less French, and there is moth
ing unlikely in the supposition that one
Of such a family should have read the
language sufficiently to translate 1t
into English at sight, while the others
should not be able to follow by ear
without translation. I am disposed to
think that we have the clew. Do you
see any serious difficulty?"
"Only one" said l. 1T is certainly
impossible that I should have heard
every word of the book in this way, and
I am under the impression, from the
tenor of the article in which the matter
was exposed, that the identity holds
good throughout. If so, / see no hope
in this direction"
sThat is true" he said musingly,
that is true If you have a copy of
your story, send it around to me at
o,oo oo,, Upt the French hook from