Coleridge relates in his “Literaria Biographia” that in a Roman
Catholic town in Germany a young woman who could neither read
nor write was seized with a fever, during which, according to
the priests, she was possest by a polyglot devil. For she talked
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, besides uttering sounds which, tho not
understood by her hearers, had doubtless, meaning, but belonged
to languages unknown to them. “Whole sheets of her ravings
were written out,” says Coleridge, “and were found to consist
of sentences intelligible in themselves, but having slight
connection with each other.” Fortunately, a physician who, being
skeptically inclined, was disposed to question the theory of the
polyglot spirit, “determined to trace back the girl’s history.
After much trouble he discovered that at the age of nine she
had been charitably taken by an old Protestant pastor, a great
Hebrew scholar, in whose house she lived till his death. On
further inquiry, it appeared to have been the old man’s custom
for years to walk up and down a passage of his house, into which
the kitchen opened, and to read to himself in a loud voice out
of his books. The books were ransacked, and among them were
found several of the Greek and Latin fathers, together with
a collection of rabbinical writings. In these works so many
of the passages taken down at the young woman’s bedside were
identified that there could be no reasonable doubt as to their
source.”--Prof. RICHARD A. PROCTOR, New York _Mail
and Express_.
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=Subjects a Necessity=--See FAME, QUALIFYING FOR.