THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 391 



latoiy ' sort, who has given me permission to name him in 

 these pages.* 



The Rev. Ansel Bourne, of Greene, R. I., was brought up to the 

 trade of a carpenter; but, in consequence of a sudden temporary loss 

 of sight and hearing under very peculiar circumstances, he became con- 

 verted from Atheism to Christianity just before his thirtieth year, and 

 has since that time for the most part lived the life of an itinerant 

 preacher. He has been subject to headaches and temporary fits of de- 

 pression of spirits during most of his life, and has had a few fits of un- 

 consciousness lasting an hour or less. He also has a region of somewhat 

 diminished cutaneous sensibility on the left thigh. Otherwise his 

 health is good, and his muscular strength and endurance excellent. 

 He is of a firm and self-reliant disposition, a man whose yea is yea and 

 his nay, nay; and his character for uprightness is such in the com- 

 munity that no person who knows him will for a moment admit the 

 possibility of his case not being perfectly genuine. 



On January 17, 1887, he drew 551 dollars from a bank in Provi- 

 dence with which to pay for a certain lot of land in Greene, paid 

 certain bills, and got into a Pawtucket horse-car. This is the last 

 incident which he remembers. He did not return home that day, and 

 nothing was heard of him for two months. He was published in the 

 papers as missing, and foul play being suspected, the police sought in 

 vain his whereabouts. On the morning of March 14:th, however, at 

 Norristown, Pennsylvania, a man calling himself A. J. Brown, who 

 had rented a small shop six weeks previously, stocked it with station- 

 ery, confectionery, fruit and small articles, and carried on his quiet 

 trade without seeming to any one unnatural or eccentric, woke up in 

 a fright and called in the people of the house to tell him where he was. 

 He said that his name was Ansel Bourne, that he was entirely igno- 

 rant of Norristown, that he knew nothing of shop-keeping, and that 

 the last thing he remembered — it seemed only yesterday — was draw- 

 ing the money from the bank, etc., in Providence. He would not be- 

 lieve that two months had elapsed. The people of the house thought 

 him insane ; and so, at first, did Dr. Louis H. Read, whom they called 

 in to see him. But on telegraphing to Providence, confirmatory mes- 

 sages came, and presently his nephew, Mr. Andrew Harris, arrived 

 upon the scene, made everything straight, and took him home. He was 

 very weak, having lost apparently over twenty pounds of flesh during 

 his escapade, and had such a horror of the idea of the candy-store that 

 he refu.sed to set foot in it again. 



The first two weeks of the period remained unaccounted for, as he 

 had no memory, after he had once resumed his normal personality, of 

 any part of the time, and no one who knew him seems to have seen him 



* A full account of the case, hy Mr. R. Hodgson, will be found iu the 

 Proceediugs of the Society for Psychical Research for 1891. 



