"THE MAINE JUMPERS."

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3838, 18 April 1881, Page 1

"THE MAINE JUMPERS."

Dr George W. Beard has been investigating some curious people in the region of Moosehead Lake in Northern Maine. One of these jumpers being surprised by an order to "strike," while standing before a window, struck his fist right through the glass cutting it severely. These jumpers hare been known to strike their fist against a red-hot store; to jump into the fire as well as into water; they are the absolute victims of the orders that are given them, or of the surprises that. are played upon them; they must do as they are told, though it kill them, or though it kill others. It is not necessary that the surprises should come from any human being or ordered to strike or to jump; any sound from any source, that comes upon them with sufficient severity and suddeness for which they are not forewarned and forearmed, may cause them to jump and to cry like the falling of a tree in the woods, when unexpected, would have the same effect upon him. The explosion of a gun or pistol is almost sure to excite these jumpers. The icreech of a steamwhistle is especially obnoxious to them. 0q one of the lake steamers in which I returned from the hotel, there was a jumper who, when the screech was heard, •jumped right up, so that he nearly hit his head on the upper deck. As the steamer Beared the landing, and came to a place where he knew* the whistle would sound again he was warned to prepare himself and he did so with success, that on the first screech he jumped scarcely any ; on the second, however, despite his care, he raised his shoulders perceptibly, but did not jump. In many of these cases, a simple raising of the shoulders, a sudden, impulsive movement, is all that is done, there being no cry, and no movement of the hands to throw or strike. When suddenly ordered to drop anything, they will do so,* as a waiter did with a plate of beans on the head of a guest. It tires them very much to jump, making them exhausted and nervons. They go off like a piece of machinery, or the explosion of a gun. It is probably" a form of hysterics.—American Populace Science Monthly.