Who has never felt an almost irresistible temptation,
and seemingly not self-originated, to let himself go? to let his mind
gallop and kick and curvet and roll like a horse turned loose? in short,
as we Yankees say, "to speak out in meeting"? Who never had it suggested
to him by the fiend to break in at a funeral with a real character of the
deceased, instead of that Mrs. Grundyfied view of him which the clergyman
is so painfully elaborating in his prayer? Remove the pendulum of
conventional routine, and the mental machinery runs on with a whir that
gives a delightful excitement to sluggish temperaments, and is, perhaps,
the natural relief of highly nervous organizations. The tyrant Will is
dethroned, and the sceptre snatched by his frolic sister Whim. This state
of things, if continued, must become either insanity or imposture. But
who can say precisely where consciousness ceases and a kind of automatic
movement begins, the result of over-excitement? The subjects of these
strange disturbances have been almost always young women or girls at a
critical period of their development. Many of the most remarkable cases
have occurred in convents, and both there and elsewhere, as in other
kinds of temporary nervous derangement, have proved contagious.
Pages:
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186