New-York tribune., 1906-12-26
DTSAppEARANCES.

What becomes of the persons who mysterious
Iy disappear? There are hundreds of them. A
few whose cases are striking or unusu1 are
mentioned in the newspapers but the majority
who disappear In a routine way, for there Is a
routine of disappearance, go out of the world,
and yet remain in it, without their mystery being
mentioned. A disappearance Is always a mys-
terry. criminal cannot mysteriously disappear.
for many of them try and fail, but an honest
man can step out of his house, take a car at the
corner and never be seen again. Death is al
ways the explanation of the mystery preferred
by the friends and the family of the disap-
peared, for any other theory is less kind, and
broad charity treats the disappeared and the
dead alike and Of them says only good.
But there are other explanations. one of the
strangest being that in the case OF the Middle
town Comm man who disappeared thirty-siI
years ago and has just returned home. He went
away a stripping. impelled by an "odd notion"
He had no quarrel with his family. He was
mourned by them as dead, and funeral service
was held by them because they conjectured
that he had been drowned in q shipwreck All
the while he was working farm only twelve
short miles away. Thrty-six years slipped
by without his revisiting his nearby home, and
when he returns he is Shocked" to learn that
his parents are dead Here is disappearance
In its acutest form, for there was no known rea-
son-in fact, no conceivable motlve-and all the
while a return home was easy, but family ties
and all the sentiments which attract men
homeward from all the quarters of the earth
were unequal to drawing this man twelve miles.
What again. after the passage of thirty-six
years, impeled him thlther? In the examina-
tion of human motives there are things past
comprehension. Is there some sort of disease
something like aphasia or amnesa. which breaks
man from his mental past, except that this
disease breaks a man from his emotional past
and snaps that continuity of sentiment which
binds him to his surroundings, human and ma
terial? What is the "Odd notion which drives
man to do what this Connecticut man did?
The normal man has roots just as much as a
tree has. He lives by his sentimental attachment
10 persons and places Hawthorne tells OF a
disappearance which he opines "will never be
repeated" Wakefield left his wife mysteriOusly
took up his dOmicile within sight OF hers in
great city, and twenty years later returned. 1t
is nearly Of a piece with this Connecticut case
Hawthorne analyZes the disappearer's motives
1t was an "odd notion in the first place which
prompted Wakefield. and there was no definite
purpose Of a prolonged stay. Habit and the IN
watched slipping away of time and q certain
absurd vanity and wrOngheadedneSs accounted
for all the rest The Connecticut man gives the
same explanation OF his vagary, except, of
course, there IS no acknowledgment OF vanity
and wrongheadedness If wilful disappearance
is not a disease. it is a marvel OF human oddity
1t is grievOus experiment at best. Hawthorne
observes: Amid the seeming confusion Of our
mysterious world. individuals are so nicely ad-
"Justed to system. and systems to one another
'and to a whole, that by stepping aside for a
moment a man exposes himself to a fearful
risk of losing his place forever. Like Wake
field. he may become. as it were, the Outcast of
"the Universe"