i88i.] 
“ Jumpers” of Maine . 
93 
completely, and he is about in the same condition as before 
he was surprised. The explosion of the Jumper, like the 
explosion of a revolver, is sudden and instantaneous; and 
like a revolver, also, the Jumper is at once ready for a new 
explosion on proper excitation. If we look at a Jumper five 
seconds after he has been jumped, we see no sign or indica- 
tion of what he has just done, or of what he can instantly 
be made to do. 
On the other hand, the phenomena of trance, of mental 
hysteria, of the “Jerkers” or “Holy Rollers” may last in any 
given case from several minutes to several hours or days.* 
Recent German investigations have, by an interesting 
coincidence, demonstrated that subjects in the mesmeric 
trance sometimes exhibit the phenomenon of repeating 
automatically what is said to them. Berger produces this 
effect by laying his warm hand on the neck of the mesmer- 
ised subjedl. 
2. In the persistence and permanence of the liability to 
be excited. 
After once the habit of Jumping is formed, the subject, 
though varying in susceptibility at different times, is yet 
always capable of displaying the phenomena in a greater or 
less degree at any moment ; once a J umper always a J umper 
expresses the prognosis. Epidemics of jerking and rolling 
are, on the contrary, limited in time and in their sphere, 
disappearing and dying utterly away with the excitements 
that give rise to them, and the habit of hysteria or of being 
entranced may also be outgrown. 
Psychologically, these Jumpers, so far as I have been able 
to see or to learn, are modest, quiet, retiring, deficient in 
power of self-possession, conceit, and push, but no more so 
than many others in various races. I have been told that 
they were of a low order of organization — half-breeds, partly 
French, partly English ; but in this respeft I was misin- 
formed ; they are at least as intelligent and as capable of 
fulfilling the duties belonging to them as the average of their 
associates who are not Jumpers; some of them can read 
and write, and all whom I saw could converse in English 
with a reasonable degree of intelligence ; possibly as much 
as we could expedf of persons of their age and environment. 
But all of them, without exception, were of shrinking tem- 
peraments. In the chorea epidemics of the middle ages, or 
of the great religious revivals of this country, this class 
would be very likely to have been attacked. 
* In my work on “Trance’' these phenomena are described in more detail 
than is here possible. 
