In the class of ill-poised minds, yclept cranks, just mentioned, the spirit of imitation is peculiarly strong and morbidly contagious. The celebrated psychiater, Baron Von Feuchtersleben, in his treatise _On the Diatetics of the Soul_, cites the case of a French soldier, who shot himself in a sentry-box; soon afterwards, several other soldiers took their lives in the same manner and in the same place. Napoleon I. ordered the sentry-box to be burned and thus put an end to the suicides. A similar instance is recorded by Max Simon in his _Hygiène de l’esprit_, in which he states that a workman hanged himself in the embrasure of a gate, and his example was followed directly by a dozen of his fellows, so that it was found necessary to wall up the gate in order to stop this strange epidemic. The same effect is produced by popular romances, in which the hero or heroine or both together dispose of themselves in this way; sometimes whole communities are thus infected by a single work of fiction; perhaps the most notable case of this kind in modern literature is the era of sentimentalism and suicidism which followed the publication of Goethe’s _Werther_. It is well known, too, that another class of sensational novels, the plots of which consist in the development of criminal intrigues, tend to promote crime by rendering it fascinating and indicating an attractive and exciting method of perpetrating it. We have a recent and very striking instance of this kind in the origin and evolution of the notorious Dreyfus affair. In June 1893, a year and a half before the arrest of Dreyfus, a novel entitled _Les Deux Frères_, by Louis Letang, appeared in the Paris _Petit Journal_, the plot of which may be concisely described as follows. A young and capable officer, Captain Philippe Dormelles, who holds a position of confidence in the French department of war, is envied and hated by two colleagues named Aurélien and Daniel. Their enmity and jealousy finally become so intense that they conspire to effect his ruin by accusing him of selling to a foreign power the secrets of the national defence. It is arranged that a compromising letter imitating the handwriting of Dormelles and addressed to a foreign military _attaché_ shall be placed in the secret archives, where it will fall into the hands of the head of the department Lieutenant-Colonel Alleward. Dormelles is arrested and thrown into the prison Cherche-Midi, and at the same time Daniel causes a violent article to be inserted in a newspaper _Le Vigilant_, charging him with high treason, and seeking to excite public opinion against him. This article concludes with the false statement that a search in Dormelles’ department had led to the discovery of important documents referring to the fabrication of smokeless powder, and that thereupon Dormelles had confessed his guilt. He is then sentenced to the galleys, but his betrothed is convinced of his innocence and finally succeeds in detecting and exposing the forgeries.