392 PSYCHOLOGY. 



after ho left home. The remarkable part of the change is, of course, 

 the peouliai' occupation which the so-called Brown indulged in. Mr. 

 Bourne has never in Ills life had the slightest contact with trade. 

 * Brown 'was described by the neighbors as taciturn, orderly in his 

 habits, and in no way queer. He went to Philadelphia several times; 

 replenished his stock ; cooked for himself in the back sliop, where he 

 also slept ; went regularly to church ; and once at a prayer-meeting 

 inado what was considered by the hearers a good address, in the course 

 •of which he related an incident which he had witnessed in his natural 

 state of Bourne. 



This was all that was known of the case up to June 1890, when I 

 induced Mr. Bourne to submit to hypnotism, so as to see whether, in the 

 hypnotic trance, his ' Brown' memory would not come back. It did so 

 with surprising readiness; so much so indeed that it proved quite im- 

 possible to make him whilst in the hypnosis remember any of the facts 

 of his normal life. He had heard of Ansel Bourne, but " didn't know 

 as he had ever met the man." When confronted with Mrs. Bourne he 

 said that he had "never seen the woman before," etc. On the other 

 hand, he told of his peregrinations during the lost fortnight, * and gave 

 all sorts of details about the Norristown episode. The whole thing was 

 prosaic enough ; and the Brown-personality seems to be nothing but a 

 rather shrunken, dejected, and amnesic extract of Mr. Bourne himself. 

 He gives no motive for the wandering except that there was ' trouble 

 back there ' and he ' wanted rest.' During the trance he looks old, 

 the corners of his mouth are drawn down, his voice is slow and weak, 

 and he sits screening his eyes and trying vainly to remember what lay 

 before and after the two months of the Brown experience. " I'm all 

 hedged in," he says: " I can't get out at either end. I don't know 

 what set me down in that Pawtucket horse-car. and I don't know how 

 I ever left that store, or what became of it." His eyes are practically 

 normal, and all his sensibilities (save for tardier response) about the 

 same in hypnosis as in waking. I had hoped by suggestion, etc., 

 to run the two personalities into one, and make the memories con- 

 tinuous, but no artifice would avail to accomplish this, and Mr. Bourne's 

 skull to-day still covers two distinct personal selves. 



The case (whether it contain an epileptic element or not) should 

 apparently be classed as one of spontaneous hypnotic trance, persisting 

 for two months. The peculiarity of it is that nothing else like it ever 

 occurred in the man's life, and that no eccentricity of character came 



* He had spent an afternoon iu Boston, a niglit in New York, an after- 

 noon in Newark, and ten days or more in Philadelphia, first in a certain 

 hotel and next in a certain boarding-house, making no acquaintances, 'rest- 

 ing,' reading, and 'looking round.' I have imfortunately been unable to 

 get independent corroboration of thL-se details, as the hotel registers are 

 destroyed, and the boarding-liouse named by him has been pulled down. 

 He forgets the name of the two ladies who kept it. 



