NORMAL AND HEIGHTENED SUGGESTIBILITY. 651 



and she acted out the dreams I suggested to her with a grace that 

 any actress might envy. I told her there was a plate of strawber- 

 ries on the table. " Oh," said she, " what beautiful berries ! May 

 I have one ? " She began eating them, and took the stem off each 

 imaginary berry with a precision that almost made an observer 

 believe that his own eyes were at fault, and that the berries were 

 really there. "Are they sweet?" said I. "Oh, yes." "Rather 

 odd, in February, isn't it ? '' said I. " I would have thought they 

 would be sour." As she ate the next berry she made a wry face. 

 " Dear me ! " she said, " it is as sour as sour can be." At another 

 time I told her I had two bouquets for her, and wished her to 

 choose the one she liked best. I gave her with my right hand a 

 real bouquet with my left, nothing. She took both, smelled each 

 in turn, exclaimed over their beauty, and finally returned to me 

 the real bouquet, saying the other was much the prettier. 



I might cover pages with such illustrations, but one is as 

 instructive as a thousand could be. This child was not " hypno- 

 tized," yet she was in a " secondary state " or dream. I was never 

 able to determine precisely how much of the real, visible, tangible 

 world entered into her dreams apart from what I deliberately sug- 

 gested to her to see, but my impression was she saw and felt as 

 the rest of us do unless my suggestions were inconsistent with the 

 testimony of her senses in that case the suggestion triumphed. 

 The suggested dreams were remarkably permanent. If she were 

 told there was a parrot or cat in the room, she would continue to 

 see it until it was abolished in the same way. Once or twice she 

 refused suggestions that I gave her. For example, when I told 

 her she was a princess, she acted the part very well ; but when I 

 told her she was a horse and was pulling a cart, she said she was 

 not, and no amount of insistence on my part could make her see 

 that cart. Once I tried to "hypnotize" her i. e., I told her I 

 would put her to sleep and she went to sleep so soundly that I 

 had great ado to get her awake again. So also after suggesting 

 dreams to her, it was not possible to restore her at once to her 

 normal condition, although if left to herself she slowly returned 

 to it. I always took pains to abolish all the hallucinations I had 

 given her, and she would then seem quite normal, but upon ques- 

 tioning her afterward I always found that her memory did not 

 begin until perhaps a half hour after she had left me, and the 

 attempt to elicit recollections of the forgotten period by leading 

 questions always resulted in throwing her into a similar second- 

 ary state. Yet there was no connection between her secondary 

 states ; in one she never recollected what had happened in another, 

 and no suggestion could make her remember. Nor was I ever 

 able to produce posthypnotic suggestions, although I frequently 

 tried to do so. I wished very much to relieve her headaches in 



