The White Pine news. [volume] (Treasure City, Nev.) 1868-1906, 1901-08-29
ONE PHASE OF MANIA.
The Fear of Space Is as Real as Any
other Kind of Fear.


"Rut speaking of manias." said an
observant citizen. several years ago
had occasion to study the most singu-
lar case of dread that | ever saw In
my life, and II was the case, too, OF
man whose personal history and whose
great genius would be far more inter-
estlng than this single popularity. But
| shall refrain from any minute refer
ence to the man or to the part he play
ed in life. He is poet and Is known
from one end OF the country to the
other for the brilliance of his verse
Wherever there Is a gathering of Bo-
hemians he Is quoted quite as often as
Omar, and in fact some of his lines are
more popular in this country than any
of the catchy bits of Bohemlanism that
are found In the Rubaiyat.
"IIe used to come to my Office very
often, and there was a mutual friend
who had an Office just under mine. Ny
friends office was In the basement, and
there was a rather dark stairway that
led down to it. As often as he would
come to my office he would ask me to
show him the way to the office OF my
friend, and would do so. | would go
nearly to the top of the steps with him.
He would pause, gaze down the long
stairway as II half alarmed and then
walk out the hallway to the street.
The first time paid no attention to the
matter, as l thought he had just
changed his mind or that he just want
ed to learn where the office was in
order to call some other time. But my
suspicion was aroused when he kept
on asking me where the office of our
friend was, so / made up my mind to
make a close study of the matter and
waited probably a week before my
friend, the poet, called again. When
he had concluded his talk with me, he
turned to me and asked that | show
him the way to the office of our friend.
| was glad to do It in order to observe
more closely his conduct. He went
through the usual performance, failing
to go down the stairway.
81 went to a physician" the narrator
continued, "who made a speciality of
peculiar things in psychological way
and told him how strangely the poet
had acted. The last time had gone to
the stairway with him he seemed to
linger longer than usual, and his face
wore frantic cast as he looked down
the long, dark stairway. The physician
Immediately classified the mental de-
rangement and told me that he had
never seen a case of 1t and would like
to meet the poet in order to conduct
an experiment. He said 1t was fear
of space and gave me the technical
name for It. but this Is unimportant.
The physician told me that 1t was a
rare mental disease and manifested IT.
self In different ways. But general
symptom was found In fear of dark
places.
1.-The fact is,' the physician said,
that men afflicted In this way are
afraid that they will be swallowed up
by some great and bottomless ehasm,
and no doubt our poet friend believed
that If he had ventured down the dark
stairway which led to the office of his
friend he would have stepped off of the
earth. and, as he was not ready to quit
the world, he did not CO.
after this the physician met the
poet, and he told me of a number of in
teresting experiments he had made
with him and said there was no ques-
tion about the correctness of his first
diagnosis. 1t was n case of fear OF
space and after the poet Is gone, If the
physician survives him, he will prob
ably regale his scientific brethren with
a rather interesting record taken from
the life of one of Americas great
poets."-New Orleans Times Democrat.