Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/70

 proper appliances these, again, could be thrown on a screen, so as to be read off at the convenience of the investigator.

"It was long before Ismar's mother and sister became alarmed by his increasing absorption in the ideal world he had created for himself. Silent and pre-occupied, he seemed to lose all interest in the real world around him; while his body wasted away, as if unequal to the burden of this double existence. At last came a crisis. He was discovered one morning in a death-like trance, in which he remained for weeks. An expert, summoned at great expense from a distant part of the globe, told of similar cases that had before occurred, though at rare intervals. He predicted that the patient, on awakening from his trance, would appear to have lost all recollection of his former life, or would recall it only through the distorting medium of his delusion. This prediction proved but too true. My unhappy kinsman had wrecked a splendid intellect in his too ardent pursuit of knowledge.

Health and strength returned with comparative rapidity. But he seemed to have lost all taste for his former studies, —to have lost, indeed, as far as could be discovered, all that knowledge acquired at so great a cost. In the ordinary affairs of life he behaved with propriety, though often betraying a strange oblivion of well-known facts. Towards his mother and sister he was the affectionate son and brother he had ever been; toward others as kind and considerate as ever. Yet, as would occasionally crop out from his conversation, he evidently associated them with some series of experiences of which they had no knowledge.