Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/68

62 "7:00 The pulse was alarmingly intermittent. There was often a pause of two seconds between beats. However, the subject was quite unaware of the fact, and perfectly comfortable.

"8:00 The subject complained of difficulty in breathing, as though a tight bandage were tied over the left side. The pulse was now almost, and sometimes quite, imperceptible. The arms became weak; in a few minutes they became absolutely paralyzed. The subject began to be a little scared. However, in about ten minutes the loss of power passed away, and he became perfectly comfortable, though disinclined to move a finger.

"8:45 The sea suddenly turned purple and tilted up to the eaves of the veranda, and instantly regained its normal aspect. The victim was not particularly excited at this sight; indeed, throughout the experiment I was struck by the very matter-of-fact way in which he received the various visions, I myself being far more keenly interested in them. The legs now became partially paralyzed for a few minutes. There was no other symptom whatever till 8:45, when very indefinite stationary spots of purple and blue-green were seen on the beach at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet. They gradually assumed the shape of rather conventionalized thistle-heads, some purple and some emerald. For a moment the shingle beach appeared to be turning into a bed of flowers, but they quickly faded away. When I went out and struck a match before the bungalow the flowers suddenly reappeared. Whenever a match was struck they became more vivid. It was now twilight and when the flowers appeared the beach became brighter.

"I now lit the lamp and placed it by the subject. The thistles had faded away. Suddenly the sea—which was gray—turned green, and became covered with symmetrically arranged spots of violet, which rotated on their axes and passed off to the right. There were three bathing-machines half way down the shingle, and the spots passed behind them.

"I now turned down the lamp. The shingle instantly became a bed of blue flowers; some unknown little plant which produced a short spire of blue blossoms, and a few green blades. I asked the subject to direct me to one spire which was higher than the others, and trod on it, when it disappeared. I turned up the lamp; the flowers disappeared.

"The subject now saw a large cutter about half a mile from shore, which sailed rapidly along and passed behind the bathing machines. He made a sketch of it as it approached, to give me the relative proportions of the cutter and the machines, and then described it as close in. As a matter of fact there was a small cutter about a mile off shore, and about one tenth the size of his sketch.

"9:25 On the beach, where the flowers had been seen before,