Multiple Ego Several Persons in One. 951 



growling. At another time she encountered a rattlesnake, which re- 

 treated under a log heap. She seized its tail, but lost her hold, and 

 then reached into the hole after it, without success. One person, a 

 brother-in-law, was, during this period, able to control her. She felt 

 obliged to obey his. orders, literally, but would cunningly evade them 

 when she could. One morning, having commanded her not to ride over 

 the hills that da}', she took advantage of the phraseologj^ of the order 

 as soon as he was out of reach, by riding through all the hollows and 

 ravines in the neighborhood. She gradually outgrew these eccentric- 

 ities, and developed in this her second state into a well-rounded and 

 properly balanced maturity. Of course, in each of her states her sur- 

 roundings, her acquaintances and friends were nearly the same, and the 

 moral and religious influences to which she was exposed were almost 

 identical in each. Yet it is remarkable that her character and disposi- 

 tion in the two states differed so widely that no person would imagine 

 the two characters could belong to the same person. All her acquire- 

 ments in her second state were made under very different circumstances 

 from those of the first. Although in her second state she had totally 

 lost the power to read and write, which belonged to her first, yet when 

 an opportunity to learn was given her a year or two after her first 

 change, she learned to read in eas} r lessons in one day. And she also 

 soon learned to write, but when she first began, she reproduced the copy 

 set before her, proceeding from the right hand toward the left. Her 

 chirography was, and always remained, totally different in the second 

 state from what it was in the first. In her first state she was quite des- 

 titute of the imaginative faculty. In her second, her imagination was 

 quite active, and discovered itself in a disposition to write poetry, in 

 writing which, though not of a high order, she was very ready. In 

 her first state, her reasoning powers were moderately good, but perhaps 

 slow ; in her second, they were far more active and lively, probably not 

 quite so reliable in their conclusions. In her first state she was steady 

 and patient of application ; in the second, more impulsive and impa- 

 tient. In her first state she was quiet, serious, sedate, and of almost a 

 melanchol}" disposition, and she looked upon the remarkable condition 

 into which she had fallen as a severe affliction from the hand of Provi- 

 dence, and dreaded a relapse into the opposite state, lest she should 

 never recover from it, and nevermore know as such the friends of her 

 youth, nor her parents as she wished to know them, as the guardians 

 of her childhood. In her second state she was cheerful, even immoder- 

 ately gay in spirits, frolicsome, fond of fun and jokes, ardent in her 

 friendships, extravagantly fond of society. While in this state she al- 

 ways dreaded a return to the other, because she regarded the state she 

 was then in as a happy and joyous phase of life, and understood the 

 other to be a dull and stupid one. 



