with it, this amazing result grew from a belief in a falsehood. She did not live in the same hour that parted her from her lover; she believed that she did, and, according to Mrs. Eddy, this belief of a falsehood counteracted all the ordinary consequences of the flight of time.
But the delusion among the insane that they are young, that they are independent of time and of this world, is very common; and the most painfully paradoxical sights that I have ever witnessed have been men and women, toothless, denuded of hair, and with all the signs of age,—sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,—some of them declaring that they were young girls and engaged to be married to presidents and kings, and even to divine beings. These delusions in some instances have been fixed for many years. Having had an official connection with an insane asylum for five years, I have had more opportunities than were desired for conversing with persons of this class.
Granting the case adduced by Mrs. Eddy to be true, and admitting that the state of the mind may have had some effect, it is of no scientific importance; for the number who show no signs of age until fifty, sixty, or even seventy years have passed, is by no means small in the aggregate; we meet them everywhere. One of the most astute observers of human nature, himself a physician, solemnly warned a gentleman that if he continued to take only four hours' sleep in twenty-four, he would die before he was fifty years of age. "What do you suppose my age to be now?" said the gentleman. "Thirty," said the physician. "I am sixty-nine," was the reply, which proved to be the fact.
Mrs. Eddy, not content with this case, continues: "I have seen age regain two of the elements it had
