“Could I but hold that sensation that steals upon me, while my mental powers are yet unimpaired by its presence, I might make a diagnosis of the disease, analyze the cause and produce the remedy, but my attempts are always futile. I fail to reproduce the feeling that was all-pervading a few short hours before the current of my mind returned to its accustomed channel.” The helplessness and baffled look upon the man’s face as he ended this self-communion was piteous. Throwing himself into a chair and covering his face with his hands, he cried almost with a moan: “To what depth of degradation, brutality and crime may I not be carried while actuated by a power foreign and antagonistic to all that Christianity, morality and education have imparted to me?” “My God! How I had hoped that time and marriage would cause a diminution in the power of these strange spells and the frequency of their visits, until, at last, I might be freed from a thralldom repugnant to all my better self.” “Vain that hoped for release! Rather do the mysterious visitations increase in frequency, and alas! also in power.” “Like insidious waves that sap and undermine the foundation of some massive granite cliff, the delusive tide recedes but to return, each succeeding visit adding to the inroad already made. Though small may be the gain, they never once relax their firm grip upon the headway won before, until the toppling mass comes crashing from its majestic height, vanquished by and victim of unremitting insidiousness.” “So I find with each recurrence of the tide of the strange spell that submerges me. That granite cliff of Christianity whereon I builded my castle of morality, that bastion of education, those redoubts of refinement, culture, aesthetics, deemed by me as creating an impregnable fortress wherein by the aid of civilization I should find secure shelter, are trembling and toppling, undermined by the waves of that inexplicable, relentless influence.” “Each attack finds me weaker to resist, each advance carries me further from my fortress; I feel my defense falling; I am drawing nearer to the brink; shall I fall? Shall I go crashing down, dragged from my high estate by some fiendish tendency as inexorable as it is degrading?” “As yet I am enabled to resist beyond the point of insensate silliness and folly, but each returning shock is accompanied by ever stronger suggestion of immorality, brutality and crime. Shall I be strong enough always to repulse this tireless current of assault? Shall I finally succumb and fall to the level of the barbarian and the beast? Soul harrowing thought!” “The insane or drink frenzied man is unconscious of his acts, but such is not my miserable fate, while held in bondage by that unknown power I appreciate the absurdity of my every act. I still am I, but powerless to control myself, I catch the look of wonder that fills the eyes of others. I feel the shame, but am powerless to remove the cause.”