DOI article:
J. [John] B. [Barrett] Kerfoot, The Tragedy of the Psycho-Kodak
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.30574#0033
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THE TRAGEDY OF THE PSYCHO-KODAK.
EVEN NOW, at the end of twenty years, I fear that this partial confes-
sion may be indiscreet. Yet I can not but feel that I owe something to
myself. I can not quite forego some little word of explanation to rehabili-
tate in part the reputation of a man who, whatever may have been his short-
comings, has made a long, an ample, and an unrecognized atonement; a man
who, for a third of his natural span of life has lived misrepresented and
despised, yet silent and uncomplaining, although he had it in his power by a
word to set society by the ears and to destroy the self-satisfaction of his
fellow-men. Having said so much in explanation, let me set down the facts
I am free to reveal, and, if at any time I seem less than frank, I only
ask that no man judge me until he has heard the whole.
With the part of my life that preceded the spring of 1922 this
tale has small concern. At that time I was thirty-three, rich, handsome,
and thoroughly satisfied with life and with my share of it. My father,
who had died when I was twenty, had left me an ample fortune, a fair
outfit of brains, and, alas, a too thorough appreciation of both. I may
as well own frankly that I was vain of my looks, my accomplishments,
and my position. I had graduated at an early age, and with honors,
and had purposed embracing medicine as a profession, even going to the
length of taking my degree; but I had soon found the life incompatible
with my tastes and had abandoned it for one of well-disguised leisure. I
was a man about town, a prominent dabbler in science, an amateur
philosopher, and a dilettante in art.
I know now that as a scientist I was looked upon as lucky rather than
original, that as a philosopher I was considered something of a bore, and
that as an artist I was not considered at all. But at the time no inkling of
all this had reached me. I had, however, been lately troubled by a haunting
consciousness of discomfort in my environment. The telepathic reaction of
my personality upon my associates, and even upon casual acquaintances at
my clubs, was unsatisfactory. There was an intangible something, a faint
touch of flippancy—even at times a hint of veiled antipathy — in their
attitude toward me which, to a person of my temperament, was unbearable.
I redoubled my efforts to impress, and hoped that it would pass; yet it grew
worse instead of better. I, who had never known the meaning of the word,
found myself uncertain and ill at ease. I finally decided to consult Dr.
Ströler, the eminent psychologiopath.
" You are suffering,” the doctor announced, after a searching examina-
tion, " from an enlargement of the folicular glands of the fifty-third anterior
convolution of the inner cerebellum.”
I gazed at him in amazement. The fifty-third anterior convolution of
the inner cerebellum, as every school-boy knows, is the seat of the apprecia-
tion of self-importance. Did he mean to say that the psychic effect, the
slightly acid mental reaction which I noticed when in company was due to
my cerebral overproduction of ego-waves ? The man must be mad !
29
EVEN NOW, at the end of twenty years, I fear that this partial confes-
sion may be indiscreet. Yet I can not but feel that I owe something to
myself. I can not quite forego some little word of explanation to rehabili-
tate in part the reputation of a man who, whatever may have been his short-
comings, has made a long, an ample, and an unrecognized atonement; a man
who, for a third of his natural span of life has lived misrepresented and
despised, yet silent and uncomplaining, although he had it in his power by a
word to set society by the ears and to destroy the self-satisfaction of his
fellow-men. Having said so much in explanation, let me set down the facts
I am free to reveal, and, if at any time I seem less than frank, I only
ask that no man judge me until he has heard the whole.
With the part of my life that preceded the spring of 1922 this
tale has small concern. At that time I was thirty-three, rich, handsome,
and thoroughly satisfied with life and with my share of it. My father,
who had died when I was twenty, had left me an ample fortune, a fair
outfit of brains, and, alas, a too thorough appreciation of both. I may
as well own frankly that I was vain of my looks, my accomplishments,
and my position. I had graduated at an early age, and with honors,
and had purposed embracing medicine as a profession, even going to the
length of taking my degree; but I had soon found the life incompatible
with my tastes and had abandoned it for one of well-disguised leisure. I
was a man about town, a prominent dabbler in science, an amateur
philosopher, and a dilettante in art.
I know now that as a scientist I was looked upon as lucky rather than
original, that as a philosopher I was considered something of a bore, and
that as an artist I was not considered at all. But at the time no inkling of
all this had reached me. I had, however, been lately troubled by a haunting
consciousness of discomfort in my environment. The telepathic reaction of
my personality upon my associates, and even upon casual acquaintances at
my clubs, was unsatisfactory. There was an intangible something, a faint
touch of flippancy—even at times a hint of veiled antipathy — in their
attitude toward me which, to a person of my temperament, was unbearable.
I redoubled my efforts to impress, and hoped that it would pass; yet it grew
worse instead of better. I, who had never known the meaning of the word,
found myself uncertain and ill at ease. I finally decided to consult Dr.
Ströler, the eminent psychologiopath.
" You are suffering,” the doctor announced, after a searching examina-
tion, " from an enlargement of the folicular glands of the fifty-third anterior
convolution of the inner cerebellum.”
I gazed at him in amazement. The fifty-third anterior convolution of
the inner cerebellum, as every school-boy knows, is the seat of the apprecia-
tion of self-importance. Did he mean to say that the psychic effect, the
slightly acid mental reaction which I noticed when in company was due to
my cerebral overproduction of ego-waves ? The man must be mad !
29
