A little girl, mentioned by Tissot, shocked at her sister having helped herself to a coveted morsel, remained stiff and motionless for an hour, a spoon in her hand, and her arm outstretched toward the dish.
A soldier, quarreling with a companion, in a fit of passion seized a bottle to throw at him; cataleptic rigidity fixt him in this attitude, motionless, unconscious, his eyes full of anger and defiance.
In another case a magistrate on the bench, insulted in the middle of his summing up, remained as if petrified in an attitude of indignation and threat at his insulter.
Again, we read of priests being cataleptized at the altar in the attitude of elevating the sacrament.—A. de Watteville, Fortnightly Review.
(2312)
PATHS, KEEPING ONE’S OWN
Some twenty years ago a United States naval officer conceived the idea that if vessels eastbound took one ocean path and vessels westbound another, collisions would be avoided. Steamship lines eagerly fell in with the suggestion, and the result is that ingoing and outgoing liners may follow well-defined lanes of traffic. Separate paths are laid out for vessels of high power. Slow vessels, freighters and the like, have their special steaming zones. Since that time no collision on the high seas between two liners has occurred.