Mental mechanisms / by William A. White.

  • White, William A. (William Alanson), 1870-1937.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mental mechanisms / by William A. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Once she was discussing death with a girl friend. Her friend said she had never had a death in her family. Just then the door bell rang three times. Mrs. W. said, Maybe that's a death now. It was a telegram announcing the death of her friend's father. She received a letter from a friend who committed suicide. The letter arrived after her friend was dead. When she was twenty-two a young man whom she knew was arrested for running up and grabbing an actress. Later he mar- ried a girl friend of hers, and three years afterwards was found murdered in a house of ill-fame. When she was eighteen she had a flirtation with a young man in a town she was visiting. This man was noted for the con- quests he had made, but he fell in love with her. He asked her to marry him and she refused. He asked her again, with the understanding that her answer would be final. She refused again. He walked home with her and blew out his brains in front of her house. As a result of this experience she was ill for several weeks. A lieutenant who had asked her to marry him was killed at San Juan hill. She had a narrow escape from death once in a cyclone. The house was nearly destroyed and two nearby houses were. The horse was killed and her mother stunned. She used to recite a great deal, for example at Chautauqua. She recited once Death Doomed by Will Carleton. There were three thousand people present. The professor had told her to really see the gallows when she was reciting. Says she actually did see them for an instant and felt as though she were being led to be hung. She says that of the different recitations she used to give she cannot recall one that did not have to do with death. She remembers such things as Tennyson's comparison of mar- riage to a winter funeral, and recalls Marie Corelli's book Ven- detta begins, I who write this am dead.