The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-10-16
FREAKS OF EMORY.

CURIOUS cases of entire lapse of MEM
Ia DRY are not by any means as rare as Is
NJ generally supposed and there are
many authentic incidents. About thir-
ty years ago young man called at the
police barracks in Melbourne and asked to
be informed of his identity. The first idea
was that the man was a lunatic, but lt
soon became evident that the statement or
his loss of memory was genuine. lie was
kept in the jail and was the object of much
interest, not only to the wardens, Dut 10
the physicians as we'll One morning he
was observed listening intently to the sing
ing. When questioned about it he said
| that he had heard it somewhere before,
and asked what it was. Being told 1t was
music he showed no intelligence, but at
the close of the service he was taken close
! to the organ and shown that the sounds
i he heard came from the instrument
The man struck few notes unntelli-
gibly and then a chord or two in harmony
! then in an instant, with look OF pleas
ure. he commenced a selection from the
Creation, which he played correctly ana
we'll.
| DR.. Usher cites some instances of alco-
| holic trance, involving loss of memory.
which are almost past belief. He tells or
| a man, temperate drinller, who to drive
away a fit of the blues one day drank
| some champagne and felt mucn better
From. this moment his memory became
iconfused, and when a couple of weeks later
| he recovered he found that he had mar
ried a French lady and was on his we'd
ding trip. Except that during the whole
time he drank steadily of champagne and
showed a tendency to fall asleep when
ever his surroundings became dull, moth
| ing unusual was noticed in his behavior.
And yet Of the marriage itself or the events
connected with it he protested to have no
memory whatever, an assertion which
was confirmed by subsequent occurrences.
In a Roman Catholic town in Germany
| a young woman was seized with a fever
and was declared by the priests to be
possessed by a devil because, though she
could neither read nor write, she was
heard speaking Latin, Hebrew and Greek
Whole sheets of her rawlings were written
down, and were found to consist of SEN
fences Ineligible in themselves, but hav-
ling no connection with one another or
her Hebrew sayings only one or two could
J be traced to the Bible, and most seemed
TO be in the Rabbincal dialect Anything
like trick was out of the question, tor
: the woman was a simple minded creature
and there was no doubt about the fever. 1t
was long before the explanation was
reached
1t occurred to the physician to trace the
; girls history, and after much trouble he
:. discovered that at the age of nine she had
been charitably adopted by an old Protes-
/ tant pastor, a great Hebrew scholar, in
J, whose house she lived tit his death. 1t
appeared that it had been the old mans
, custom for years 20 walk up and down the
: passage in his house, into which the
) Kitchen opened, and to read to himself in
: loud voice from a book. The volumes
2 were ransac ked and among them were
found several of the Greek and Latin
: fathers and a collection of Rabbnical
, writings. In these books many of the
:. passages taken down at the young
), womans bedside were traced to their
source.
: 'eThe Bride of LammermoOr' was WritteH
bv Sir Walter Scott during an Illness, and
lii was afterward found that he had for
gotten entirely what he had created. The
, book was written and published before its
author was out of bed, and when first put
Into his hands he assured his friends that
(. he did not recollect a single incident. char
acteh Or converse ton it contained. The
ORIGINAL incidents he had been familiar
i with since his boyhood he still remem-
i bered, but he knew no more Of the story
i than he did before he began to write or
even think about writing it.