Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1908-03-26

desire to fly. This idea haunted him
to such a degree that he decided to
put it into practice. He shut himself
up in his study room, climbed up to
the window and made the movements
for flying in the air. He fell from a
height of more than 16 feet and was
sick for some time following"
Tolstoi's Peculiar Mania.
Later Tolstoi's particular brand of
insanity prompted him to fall in love,
not once, but threefold; for, having
met the three daughters of DR.. Berce,
he began by being very much taken
by the oldest, then he thought he was
in love with the second. and finally
fell In love with the third" The triple
romance ended abruptly, for Tolstoi
suddenly decided that instead of get
ting married he would NOW hay with
the moujiks in peasants blouse.
Ossip Lourie, who made a psyche
logical study of many of the great Rus
sian novelists of the nineteenth cen
tury, summed up Tolstoi's case in the
following way:
''''Di 10 OIi' vi lllOSt u IlltIl W
whom the English aphorism, They
are certainly cracked, but the crack
lets in light might apply. In word
Tolstoi was a semi-insane genius"
Even Socrates must have had a
streak of insanity in him, for he went
into ecstacies which were almost cata.
leptic fits. At table, or in the streets
of Athens. or in the camps. he would
suddenly stop short, sometimes with
out motive. At other times, on The oc-
caslon of sneeze either by himself
or one of his neighbors, he would act,
or would not act, according to whether
the sneeze had taken place on his
right hand or on his left"
Insanity of Some Great Men.
Prof. Grasset cites the cases of
many other great men of past and
present times whose brands of in.
sanity were manifested in various
ways. Pascal. for instance, could not
stand seeing water without falling into
a perfect fit of passion" Then Au-
guste Comte who has exerted vast
and lasting influence on the philo.
sophlcal position of the savants of the
nineteenth century, was undoubtedly
semi-insane when he was not wholly
insane. He wrote incoherent letters
While he was taking a walk one day
he wanted to drag his wife with him
into the Lake d'Enghein. During his
meals he would try to drive his knife
into the table, like Walter Scott's
Highlander, and he would order the
succulent back of pig and recite bits
of Homer"
or Cork, Prof. Grasset writes that
he made an attempt to commit sui
eide at the age of Is and belongs to
the category of the semi-insane who
have been termed vagabonds or wan.
derers."
Guy de Maupassant died insane. He
had often confessed to Paul Bourget
that he frequently saw his double In
going into his own room he would see
himself seated upon his own sofa. The
roots of his disease seemed to be
confused with the very qualities of his
talent. Nillemain had ideas Of perse-
cution. Jean Jacques Rousseau was
Successively clockmaker, mountebank.
music master, painter and servant,
and then followed the paths of medi-
cine, music, theology and botany. He
used to mediate bareheaded in the
sun at midday. He fell in love at II.
He would suddenly depart from an
inn, leaving his trunk behind him.
Gerard de Nerval, the political writer
and poet, was subject to hallucina-
tions. He would be found on the street
corner, his hat in his hand lost in
sort of ecstacy In the Tuileries he
saw the goldfish in the big fountain
putting their heads out of the water
trying to entice him to follow them to
the bottom. The queen of Sheba was
waiting for him. they said. He was
found at the Palais Royal dragging a
live lobster along at the end of a blue
ribbon. lie tried TO fly like the birds,
and one day at moment, in one of
the streets of Paris. when he waited
with his arms spread out for his soul
to mount to a star he was gathered in
by gendarme because he had pre-
pared for this ascension by taking off
his terrestrial garments"
Freaks of Men of Genius.
Baudelaire dyed his hair green. He
was an epicure of odors, and used to
say that his soul scared upon perfumes
as the souls of other men scared upon
music. One day after throwing a
travelling glazier downstairs and break
ing every pane of glass Baudelaire ex-
claimed; The beauty of life! The
beauty of life He declared later that |
he experienced at that moment an in
Finite joy because he was not yet in
sane, at least, not officially So
The case of Alfred de Musset, who
was restless visionary and slightly |
is most interesting. In the |
Cafe de la Regence it was his habit to |
order plate of cigars and a frightful |