Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/493

Rh abnormal occurrences. It is, for instance, pertinent to note that a student who on leaving his class-room instantly observes that the hat and umbrella that hang upon his hook are not his, had not noticed this fact when he had taken these articles from his room-mate in the morning, and used them. The morning exchange occurs when the attention is not particularly directed to the recognizable personal marks of the articles; but in choosing one's own belongings from half a hundred others the identification process is more attentively demanded.

There is a characteristic and common variety of this substitution-lapse that consists in the interchange of parts of two activities, both of which are partially present to the mind. Sometimes the two activities are allied members of what may be regarded as a single occupation: sometimes the two are curiously unrelated, their connection being only that they are charged upon a common consciousness. Of the former I have quite an array of instances. There is the serving of the strawberry hulls while the berries are left in the pantry; the placing of the coffee-strainer on the tray while leaving the cup of coffee in the kitchen; the sprinkling of sugar on one's egg and dropping the salt in the coffee-cup; the placing of the washed dishes in the refrigerator and of the 'left-overs' of the meal in the pantry; the attempt to thread one's thimble; the intermittent dipping of the pen in the mucilage bottle and of the brush in the ink, while writing labels and pasting them on glasses; even the dropping of the watch into the boiling water, while consulting the egg to gauge the time; or, in the excitement of a fire, the throwing of a lamp out of the window while carefully carrying down the bedclothes. The more striking interchanges are naturally those of unrelated activities. The mind is charged with two tasks; and the round peg drops into the square hole. A young lady, upon receiving a letter while she is engaged in putting her hat away, tosses the perused sheets into the hat-box, and places the hat in the wastepaper basket. Under similar circumstances, with a book in one hand and some discarded papers in the other, the book is thrown into the fire or is rescued just as it is ready to leave the hand. A servant, instructed to fill the reservoir of the kitchen-stove with water and the grate with coal, drops the coal into the reservoir, but 'comes to' in the act of carrying water to the hot grate. Quite common is the throwing away of the article while retaining the wrapping, even when it happens to be a caramel, and the paper is put into the mouth. Unusual and yet natural is the instance of the young lady seated in the train and eating a banana, who, upon the approach of the conductor to collect the tickets, realizes that she has thrown her purse containing the ticket out of the window, while carefully placing the banana-peel in her hand-bag; or that of a young man, absorbed in a novel, conscious of the fading light, but too interested to stop to light the lamp, and also