The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1907-05-03
A Blow in the Head.

What effect a blow on the head may
have upon the one who receives it no man
can predict. Stories have been written
the turning point of which was the recov-
cry of memory lost by such blow. In
more recent times instances have come to
light-through modern psychological treat
ment-in which personality was apparent
ly quite changed by blow on the head.
Many backward schoolboy, even when
apparently eager to do criminal things, has
been found to be suffering from the effect
of such shock received years before and
to be durable by surgery.
Seldom is such story more thrilling
than the true one which changed the life
of young writer who died recently in
Western city.
From his earliest boyhood he had been
incorrigible. He began running away
from home before he was three years old,
and as soon as he was of school age became
terror to his teacher He stole from his
mother, led other boys astray, and by his
misadventures and his habit of going on
long journeys with the roughest tramps
kept his mother on the verge of nervous
prostration.
Every imaginable plea was tried in vain
with him. He made promises, only to
break them He seemed unable to resist
the mad impulse to vagabondage which
| impelled him. Several times his parents
had him examined for sanity, and thever
dict of the alienists was that there was
some cause of mental disturbance which
they could not determine. The police Of
many States came to know him.
At last his behavior so wore on his
mother that she was driven to Europe in
order that she might rest for time, out
of hearing of his adventures. Even in
Europe, however, she was not free from
him, for, tramping through the Continent,
he encountered her in public park. No
one could have been more disreputable in
appearance than the tramp who thus con-
fronted her, but the mother heart went
out to him, and she persuaded him to re-
main little while
CAT least she said, ''if you must do
this way, let me provide you with money.
Let me hear from you once in a willie.
Let me know you are safe and well.
All this he promised to do, and having
desire to see South America, went with
her consent, to England to embark on
sailing vessel for a tramp through that con-
tinent As they lay at anchor in the har-
Dor mouth waiting for clearer weather
fellow passenger and he stood in the bow,
looking out into the fog.
Suddenly without warning, a huge
steamship crashed into them and cut far
into the sailing ships wooden hull Spars
fell from aloft and the fellow passenger was
instantly killed. The American was picked
up unconscious, with a jagged wound in his
head, where spar had struck him.
He lay unconscious in the hospital for
long time, tenderly nursed by his mother,
and then passed through siege of brain
fever. But when the illness was over and
he was rational and conscious again a
change had been wrought. Something
had been altered in his brain, and all the
passion for vagabondage had left him. He
cared for tramping no longer.
81 only want to go to work to turn my
knowledge of tramp's world to account, "
he said, $50 that | may prevent as many
other boys as possible from going the ter
rible road | went.
To that end he long devoted himself
He wrote many stories of tramping days,
but through them all ran the note of sor-
row that so many years of his life had
been lost in disreputable wanderings.