THE BEDSIDE COMFORTER* (The Spinster Visits the Maternity Hospital.) A MONOLOGUE. OU poor child, how do you feel? Dear me, your face looks awfully drawn and haggard; but that is to be expected after the narrow squeak you've had your mother thought you'd die, sure. Well, you'll soon forget, and they say the second one is never so bad. There'll never be a second? That's what they all say— such an empty threat; but some live to have a dozenand lots have twins as well. Only six pounds? Why, no; I can't looks queer, some "Why, yes, of course I want to see the baby! Oh, here comes the nurse with it now. My! isn't that awfully undersized? truthfully say it's pretty. Its head way, and aren't its ears rather big? Of course, you don't notice it, and in time she may 'grow up' to them. That funny little yellow-red wrinkled face looks for all the world like a stale baked apple! "Now that the nurse is out of ear-shot, I can't help telling you I think she has a sort of sinister expression. I wouldn't trust that woman out of my sight. Do I envy you your baby? Gracious, no! To be perfectly frank, I must say I don't care much for babies; puppies and kittens and all young animals are much more interesting. They know so much right off, while babies are nothing to speak of until they get to be three or four years old. You don't agree with me? Well, it's a good thing you don't, with a ten-days' old baby on your hands! "Aren't you afraid they've changed it by mistake and given you the wrong one? But how do you know it's yours? Nonsense! No one but you could see any resemblance to your husband. All babies look the same. Don't they put any kind of mark on her? Oh! A wristtag! But that could so easily slip off by accident when those careless nurses are bathing them. Probably a lot are dumped into a vat together to save time and soap. With them all squirming and howling at once, it wouldn't be strange if those tags came unfastened in the slippery suds. Well! I'm glad you don't worry about it. If you don't, I can't see why I should! Anyway that baby looks as much like me as it does like your husband! "What do they give you to eat in this place? You *Copyright reserved by the author. had fried ham for breakfast—and baby only a little over a week old? Aren't you afraid of such indigestible stuff? I've heard of babies being thrown into spasms from their mothers eating improper food. Do you mean to say you were supposed to have ham? Of course I understand the nurse must give you what's ordered, but I must say doctors haven't any more sense than other people-even these high-priced ones! I know it holds to reason when you pay a doctor nearly a thousand dollars that you expect to obey his orders so as to get your money's worth-but fried ham! I don't believe any doctor would be such a fool, and what's more, I don't believe he ever did order it. I bet a cent that tricky nurse gobbled your breakfast and sent you hers! "Yes, the baby's eyes are a pretty color-what one can see of them through those slits but they always change, you know. You haven't noticed there's a decided cast in the left one? Possibly you're right, and babies often turn their eyes in that way. I know none of you are cross-eyed, but I've never seen your husband's people, neither have you, you know. That comes of marrying a man whose family is on the other side of the globe! Husbands aren't apt to tell their wives of any physical defects on their side of the house, or of mental queernesses either. Don't you remember Mary Macumberand how her baby was deficient and her husband had never told her his own brother was an imbecile? Men always conceal such things when they are after a girl, but they're mad enough if she covers anything up! Now don't dispute and be so cross about my telling plain truths, it will affect the baby and make her fretful. Yes, yes, I know she's a boy but I always call babies ‘she'—I don't know why. Anyway sex doesn't amount to a row of pins at this stage of the game! "She-he-has quite a rash, hasn't he? Do you think she could have been exposed to measles or scarlet fever over in the nursery? They don't allow outsiders in there? They may have rigid rules, but law! they're never kept! Those red spots certainly do look suspicious. I'd have the doctor examine them when he comes if I were you. No children allowed to come to the hospital at all to visit? Well, these diseases do creep in, in some mysterious way, in spite of their old rules. Does the baby always grab you that way? She's a regular experience! Still, we never know what men are capable little pig, isn't he? Oh, you do expect to keep on nursing her-him? You'll be lucky to escape the everlasting sterilizing of milk and feeding-bottles, but you must expect to be deprived of lots of things you'd like to eat, and of course you won't be able to leave her longer than three hours at a time My cousin Dorothy was worn to a shadow with hers, poor girl! Why, she took that baby home to of even the best of them! "Yes, your baby is a dear now, but you just wait till he is old enough to say 'I wont!' Oh, yes, he will too; and think how you'll feel the first time he comes home with a bloody nose from fighting another boy, or with his knickerbockers in tatters from climbing telegraph poles! They say it's no joke to have a boy. Yes, I know you wanted a boy, but everyone says they're so much harder THURBER her mother's when it was five months old and her family said she looked as if she were just getting over typhoid! The drain on her system from nursing it, and the loss of sleep, got on her nerves so that now she's in a private sanitarium, a perfect wreck with a nervous breakdown, while her husband-well, he's dancing other sorts of 'breakdowns' at the Broadway cabarets. You know he always was a gay bird. Why, Mollie, what are you crying for? It doesn't follow that you'll have any such marry. to bring up than girls; though I must say you escape making fol-de-rols and the fuss of weddings when they Yes, of course, it is funny to talk about this mite marrying; but if he lives (and I do hope these spots aren't what I suspect)-he'll probably marry, and ten to one you won't like your daughter-in-law. Mothers seldom do! Millie scolds me whenever I look on the gloomy side, but who wouldn't who sees so many friends all faded out from the wear and tear of bringing up children? If they don't fade and get thinner than a rail, they take on fat and look like middle-aged cooks. If I were a man and my wife got to be a mountain, I'd sue for divorce! "I hope you'll see a dentist as soon as you are well enough. Poor Dorothy had two teeth crowned just before she went to the sanitarium. They say it's a tooth for a child! Yours are so pretty now. Yes, they do look strong, to be sure, but do go and have them examined. You may be saved losing some for a while, anyway. "Yes, of course you love to cuddle the warm little thing! You bring them into the world and suffer torments doing so, and then bring them up in the world and suffer from their ailments:-croup, mumps, measles, chicken-pox, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and perhaps fits; with broken arms or legs thrown in for good measure. Yes, I know I exaggerate-it's my sense of humor, I suppose. My saving sense of humor is all that keeps me from viewing the troubles of this life too seriously. "Well, I mustn't outstay my welcome-it's sweet of you to say I haven't, though I'm sure I saw you yawning! You must try to look cheerful and like your old self when I run in next time. I do so love to visit friends and show them my sympathy in sickness and trouble. My, no! I don't consider you in trouble! Not a bit like poor Josie Mayville. Haven't you heard? Her baby was born just two weeks ago. It was a 'blue' baby and lived only a few hours. Now, Josie's life is despaired of -though she was getting on just as well as you seem to be, till the ninth day, when she took a sudden turn for the worse and has been at death's door ever since. I must stop there on my way home. If I see flowers and ribbon hanging on their door-bell, I'll never have the cour age to ring to ask for particulars. I can look at the death notices the first thing tomorrow morning. I always look anyway. Just as sure as I don't, someone dies and I don't know about it, and the friends must think it strange I don't go near them or attend the funeral. Why, of course you aren't in such trouble, as I said before; but we never know what may happen in this uncertain life! Jane has a friend whose husband was run down by an auto and killed when on his way to the hospital where she was lying with her first baby just as you are. She went into convulsions when they told her, and they fear she'll lose her mind! "Mercy, you ought to have said that it was time for your nap! Now, my dear, try and not look quite so lugubrious when your hubby comes. You mustn't drive him from you to seek smiling, care-free faces. These men are queer creatures, and they always need watching when their wives are away; especially in this great city where they can roam from the Battery to the Bronx and no one the wiser! "Yes, I see the nurse beckoning and she is looking daggers at me. I guess she feels I see through her tricks! I know she ate your breakfast and gave you her fried ham! "Well, good-bye dear. There! I shouldn't have kissed you, because my throat has felt awfully sore all day. I hope I'm not in for diphtheria-there's a lot of it in our block! Cheer up, the worst is yet to come, as Billy says. I'll come soon and help brighten your loneliness. Sleep tight-bye-bye!" GEORGIANA CHEESMAN. New York, N. Y. SWAMP LAND TO LET. DUAL PERSONALITIES* VERY human being has two personali- He was in reality the Rev. Ansel Bourne, who suddenly had found himself in a strange town and in a small fruit ties: an archaic, primitive, childlike, unadapted personality, and a modern, sophisticated, adult, and, to all appearances, adapted personality. Civilization and education have superimposed the second over the first or rather built over the first a thin crust of manners which does not permit its sharp angles to protrude. When the operation of walling in the archaic personality has been performed in a bungling way, some of its sharper points have a tendency to crop out, and when civilization tries to force back all those sharp points, by exerting on the thin crust a pressure it cannot bear, the archaic personality breaks through entirely and for a certain period of time refuses to be buried again. The psychiatrists of the old school were extremely puzzled by cases of double personality and some spoke of dissociation of the brain, of two separate brains, of wrong association of neurons, etc. To the psychoanalyst, a case of double personality is not any more mysterious than the simplest of our day or night dreams. It is a neurosis which offers to the subject a means of escape from reality, which enables him to regress to a simpler mode of life in which some of his responsibilities or all of them are removed, and which in no essential detail is different from the various forms of "insanity" for which psychiatrists have devised designations which are both impressive and meaningless. A brief review of the best known cases of double personality will help me to make my point clear. The Rev. Ansel Bourne was a man of excellent character and reputation, enjoying the confidence of all his associates. His health was good and his muscular strength and endurance normal. Since childhood he had been subject to fits of "blues," and became easily de pressed. One day he drew $500 from a bank in Providence, boarded a Pawtucket train and disappeared for two months. Then his nephew in Providence received a telegram saying that a man claiming to be Rev. Ansel Bourne was in Norristown, Pa., and was acting strangely. The man was not acting strangely, but very normally. *From "Psychoanalysis and Behavior," by André Tridon, to be published October 15, 1920, by D. A. Knopf, Inc., New York City. store. Six weeks before his awakening, Bourne had gone to Norristown, rented a small store, stocked it with candy and fruit and had been doing business as A. Brown, living in the back of his shop where he cooked his own meals. His manners never attracted anyone's attention. He went regularly to church and at a prayer meeting once made a rather good address. When the awakening came and he regained his former personality, he was very weak and had lost over twenty pounds in weight. William James then examined him and induced him to submit to hypnotism. In hypnosis the Brown personality came to the fore with surprising readiness and with such insistence that the subject could not remember any of the facts of his life as Ansel Bourne. He didn't even "know" Ansel Bourne in hypnosis and repeated constantly that he felt "hedged in at both ends." He could not remember any of the incidents preceding the ride to Pawtucket, nor any of those following his awakening in Norristown. He gave no explanations whatever for his escapade but that "there was trouble back there" and that “he wanted rest.” In this case the first personality did not know the second, nor did the second know the first. In other cases one of the personalities was acquainted with the other, or both knew each other; and in one case there was in the second a distinct feeling of scorn and hatred for the first; in another, a deep friendship was felt by both personalities for each other. MISS BEAUCHAMP, studied by Morton Prince, was a serious-minded person, fond of books and study, very idealisitic, with a morbid New England conscientiousness and a great deal of pride and reserve, very unwilling to expose herself or her life to anyone's scrutiny. One day, "owing to some nervous excitement," she became an entirely different personality. She called herself Sally, a creature full of fun, unable to take anything very seriously, scorning books and church-going, eager for all forms of amusement, lacking all the educational accomplishments of Miss Beauchamp, such as a knowledge of foreign languages. |