right." B.: "I'm all wrong. My name is'nt Brown. Where am I?" E.: "Norristown." B.: "Where's that?" E.: "In Pennsylvania." B.: "What part of the country?" E.: "About 17 miles west of Philadelphia." B.: "What time in the month is it?" E.: "The 14th." B. "Does time run backwards here? When I left home it was the 17th." E.:"17th of what?" B.: "17th of January." E.: "It is the 14th of March."

Mr. Earle thought Mr. "Brown" was out of his mind, and said that he would send for a doctor. He summoned Dr. Louis H. Read, to whom Mr. Bourne told the story of his doings at Rhode Island, and how he remembered nothing between the time of seeing the express wagons on Dorrance Street and waking up that morning March 14th. "These persons," he said, "tell me I am in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and that I have been here six weeks, and that I have lived with them all the time. I have no recollection of ever having seen one of them before this morning." He requested Dr. Read to wire to his nephew, Andrew Harris, at 121 Broad Street, Providence, R. I. Dr. Read telegraphed:" Do you know Ansel Bourne? Please answer." The reply came: "He is my uncle. Wire me where he is, and if well."

Later this nephew came up to Norristown, sold the goods in the store by auction, and settled up the business affairs of "Mr. Brown," who, as Ansel Bourne, travelled back with him to Rhode Island. Dr. Read adds, in the account of the case, which he furnished to Dr. Weir Mitchell; "He said he was a preacher and farmer, and could not conIceive why he should have engaged in a business he knew nothing about and never had any desire to engage in. When asked about his purchasing and paying for goods, and paying freight bills, he said he had no recollection of any such transactions." The family with whom he lived say that after the occurrence of that morning he was greatly changed. He was annoyed at any reference to his store, and never entered it afterwards. He became despondent, took no food, was unable to sleep, and became greatly prostrated, both physically and mentally.

Whether or no this was a case of "masked epilepsy," no one familiar with the peculiarities of the hypnotic state can fail to see the likeness between the experience of Ansel Bourne and that of patients who have purposely been kept for considerable periods under the influence of hypnotic suggestion. Such patients, when aroused from the hypnotic trance have never any recollection of the time which has elapsed since they were "put to sleep," although in the interim they have been carrying on the ordinary business of life as if the whole "ego" were acting.

Early in 1890, Professor James, of Harvard, hearing of the case, conceived the idea that if Mr. Bourne could be hypnotized, a complete history of the whole incident might be obtained from him whilst in the hypnotic trance. The circumstances had naturally left a painful and perplexed impression on Mr. Bourne; he was anxious to have any light possible thrown on his strange experience, and he readily acquiesced in the proposals made for hypnotism.

Here, it must be noted, that no amount of suggestion, however strongly urged or frequently repeated, ever succeeded in merging the consciousness of "Albert Brown" in that of "Ansel Bourne;" the one personality was absolutely separated from the other.

Ansel Bourne came to Boston on five consecutive days, May 27-31, and during that time Professor James and Mr. Hodgson obtained from him, in the "deep" hypnotic state, the following detailed account of his doings during the eight weeks from January 17 to March 13, 1887.2

He said that his name was Albert John Brown, that on January 17, 1887, he went from Providence to Pawtucket in a horse-car, thence by train to Boston, and thence to New York, where he arrived at 9 P. M. and went to the Grand Union Hotel, registering as A. J. Brown. He left New York on the following morning and went to Newark, N. J., thence to Philadelphia, where he arrived in the evening, and stayed for three or four days in a hotel near the depot. He then spent a week or so in a boarding house in Filbert Street, about No. 1115, near the depot. It was kept by two ladies, but he could not remember their He thought of taking a store in a small town, and after looking round at several places, among them Germantown, chose Norristown, about twenty miles from Philadelphia, where he started a little business in five cent goods, confectionery, stationery, etc.

names.

He stated that he was born in Newton, New Hampshire, July 8, 1826 [he was born in New York City, July 8, 1826], had passed through a great deal of trouble, losses of friends and property; loss of his wife was one trouble, she died in 1881; three children living, but everything was confused prior to his finding himself in the horse car on his way to Pawtucket; he wanted to get away somewhere, he did'nt know where, and have rest. He had six or seven hundred dollars with him when he went into the store. He lived very closely, boarded by himself, and did his own cooking. He went to church and also to one prayer-meeting. At one of these meetings he spoke about a boy who

2 Professor Janet, of Havre, discovered accidentally that by inducing a deeper condition of hypnotic trance, a personality can be "tapped" which would otherwise be unknown.

had kneeled down and prayed for the passengers on a steamboat from Albany to New York.

He had heard of the singular experience of Ansel Bourne, but did not know whether he had ever met Ansel Bourne or not. He had been a professor of religion himself for many years, belonged to the "Christian" denomination, but back there everything was mixed up. He used to keep a store at Newton in New Hampshire, and was engaged in lumber and trading business; had never been previously taken up with the business which took him to Norristown. He kept the Norristown store for six or eight weeks. How he got away from there was all confused; since then it has been a blank. The last thing he remembered about the store was going to bed on Sunday night March 13, 1887. He went to the Methodist church in the morning, walked out in the afternoon, stayed in his room in the evening and read a book.

During the enquiry, one of the most remarkable phenomena is the utter failure of suggestion to combine the Bourne with the Brown state, thereby demonstrating that suggestion is not the principal factor in hypnotism. I will give two instances:

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At 11.45 A. M., May 31, Mr. Hodgson hypnotizes Bourne, and, after a couple of minutes, says, "What's your name? It's Bourne, is'nt it?" No, it's Brown." Mr. Hodgson wakes him up and tries the same experiment again, with the same result: at the first touch of trance he is Brown. Other experiments were made on succeeding days to connect the two personalities, but vainly. On July 7, at 10 P. M., Ansel Bourne was entranced by Mr. Hodgson who tells him he will remain Ansel Bourne after being hypnotized. In vain; he passes at once into the Brown state. Mr. Hodgson then enumerates the chief events of Bourne's life, telling "Brown" that he is "Bourne," and that he remembers these events. This is repeated several times, and Mrs. Bourne and Professor James reiterate the same circumstances. "Brown," however, reaches nothing more than a faint remembrance of the year of his birth, of his first marriage and of the death of his first wife. It seems doubtful, though, if these remembrances were not connected with the "Brown" state, because " Brown" always gave the date of his birth (though not the place) correctly, and remembered he had had a wife who was dead.

3 An experience of his real life.

4 A detailed account of the questions and answers in this enquiry is given, but would take up too much space here.

It would take too long to recapitulate all the evidence collected by Mr. Wm. Romaine Newbold, Lecturer on Psychology in the University of Pennsylvania, in verification of Ansel Bourne's statements whilst in trance. At the Kellogg House, where "Brown" stayed for about two weeks before going to Norristown, he was well remembered by the colored waiter Jackson, and by Mrs. Kellogg. They described him as a very quiet man, who said he was a carpenter and came from "down east, somewhere." Every day he used to go out and look out for a suitable place to begin business in. After a while he came one day and said he had found just the place for him, and that was Norristown. Then he bought goods for the store he intended to open there, all of which goods he left in Jackson's care. "Seemed perfectly himself," and never gave any reasons for wishing to commence business here. Afterwards, Jackson and Mrs. Kellogg had seen accounts in the papers and recognized the man there referred to as the man who had stayed with them. They thought, however, he had become crazy after leaving them, but it never occurred to them that there had been anything wrong with him whilst with them.

I will now give an account, as briefly as I can, of the curious experiences which befel Ansel Bourne when he was about thirty years of age; experiences which were accounted for by the medical man who attended him (Dr. Thurston, of Westerly, R. I.) as the results of sunstroke, and by the people in the village where he lived as "Wonderful Works of God."

Ansel Bourne, as already stated, was of New England parentage, and, up to the age of thirty-one, was a hard working carpenter who, from being a member of the Baptist church, became a "convinced atheist," not of the aggressive sort, but "silent and stubborn." It must be noted that this "atheism" in a man of scanty education must have been of the shallowest sort, and that beneath the surface lay depths of Calvinistic ancestry and training. He had conceived a rooted aversion for a sect calling itself the "Christian" church, and for one of its ministers who was his near neighbor.

In August, 1857, he had several attacks of sickness, brought on possibly by working in extremely hot weather, and these attacks culminated in a fit of unconsciousness which lasted from Sunday, the 16th of August, till the following Tuesday, when he became conscious of his condition, but remained in a critical state for some days. The next two months were passed in renewed attempts to work, and fresh attacks of illness, though of a less serious character than those of August. On Sunday, the 25th of October, he spent the day and evening at his

own house playing cards—a horrible crime for the Calvinist conscience which was lying ready to revenge itself!

5

On the 28th of October, Ansel Bourne started for the village of Westerly, and was noticed by some neighbors to be walking fast, as though feeling quite well. He was conscious of no unusual feelings till the thought came vividly into his mind that he ought to go to meeting (i. e., to church). Mentally he enquired, "Where?" The inner voice replied, "To the Christian' chapel." To this idea his spirit rose in bitter opposition, and he said within himself, "I would rather be struck deaf and dumb forever than to go there." A few minutes after he felt giddy, and sat down on a stone by the wayside to rest. He saw an old man in the distance approaching him with a wagon, and immediately after felt as though some powerful hand drew down something over his head and face and finally over his whole body, depriving him of his sight, his hearing and his speech, and leaving him perfectly helpless. Yet, he declares, he had as perfect a power of thought as at any time in his life, and the awful choice he had made (that he would rather be deaf and dumb forever than go to the Christian chapel) came with awful significance before him. His whole mind was full of agonizing horror and dread of the God he thought he had so irretrievably offended. He was conscious of being taken up in the wagon; of being carried into a house and placed in a chair, and then of being put in bed.

Dr. Thurston, who was summoned immediately, says that on reaching his patient's bedside he "found him perfectly insensible the pupils of his eyes quite insensible of light, widely dilated and not contracting on the application of sudden and vivid light." The patient himself, however, constantly maintained that he was entirely conscious. "About him," he says, "all was as silent as though there were neither a God, nor life, nor motion in the whole, wide universe. The silence was as though the soul had been cast into a deep, bottomless and shoreless sepulchre, where dismal silence was to reign eternally." He fully acknowledged the justice of God and spurned from his soul the thought of insulting God by asking mercy for such a sinner.

Powerful counter-irritants were applied, and by Friday consciousness was partially restored for external things. He felt the posts of his bedstead and the window near, and was satisfied he was in his own house; he felt movements on the bed and recognized the caresses of his little children; then, about 26 hours after the attack, his power of sight suddenly returned. He saw his wife and a neighbor, and made signs that

5 From an account written under the direction of Ansel Bourne.