ne of them
happened to fall out of a tree into an open space on the ground where
there was nothing to climb into, he was likely to be attacked by a lion or
a tiger. This always filled the life of our little ancestor with intense
fear and so affected his brain that the impress of it has been handed down
and occasionally crops out in some of us. Our dreams of falling, we are
told, are a vestige of the mental condition experienced by our
monkey-foreparents when they made a misleap and fell to the ground.

There is also the fear of a confined area, the fear of a crowd, fear of
loss of speech at an inopportune moment, fear of falling buildings, fear
of being alone, fear of poison, fear of germs, fears _ad nauseam_. I have
qualified in all of them and taken post-graduate courses.

Another one of these fears I shall speak of and in no spirit of levity. It
is too pathetic for pleasantry or jest. It is the fear that you will in
some thoughtless moment, when the occasion is most ill-timed, utter some
vulgar or profane word. These ugly, repulsive words or thoughts will cling
with the greatest tenacity and defy every effort to eradicate them. They
are of a nature entirely foreign to one's disposition and character; for
the neurasthenic, with all his eccentricities, is usually refined and
exemplary. A minister of the Gospel whose life was of almost immaculate
purity stated that the word "damn" often tortured his life and caused him
to fear that he would give it an untimely utterance. I have found that
many persons are similarly afflicted, but are rather reluctant to let
their fears be known.

Hydrophobia demands a few words. A few times in childhood I was scratched
by a dog, in consequence of which I stood in mortal fear of hydrophobia.
It was a popular belief that the poison of rabies might lie latent in the
system and not manifest itself until years after. This belief obtains with
many people to-day. The "madstones" in the possession of many credulous
people help to perpetuate the fear of this awful disease. As a matter of
fact, the madstone is simply a porous rock which may adhere to a warm,
moist surface and exert an absorbent action. Any poison introduced under
the skin is disseminated through the system in less than two minutes. If
the doctor ever gave you a hypodermic, your knowledge on this point is
convincing. The folly then of applying something, days or weeks later, to
absorb the poison of a mad-dog's bite from a localiz