The New York 7Tines has an interesting story of a
man saved from a wreck through having a life-preserver, which enabled him eventually to get hold of a plank,—alone it would not have kept him enough out of the water to prevent his losing consciousness, —the interest of which lies in its confirmation of the often asserted fact that to half-drowning men there suddenly comes back the minutest details of something that has previously hap- pened in their lives. In this case it was the vision of a business document in his safe, in which he saw every erasure and every alteration, however minute, with the effect of suddenly remember- ing that he could not afford to die, as some most important business affecting his family was still unsettled, and this it was that finally roused him to the effort of securing the plank. But nine times out of ten, the details which thus return upon the memory of half-drowned men are wholly insignificant matters, which stand out with the most vivid brilliancy, and yet which have no meaning, moral or intellectual. What is the reason of it ? We suppose it must be that drowning has much the same effect as sleep in arresting all but the associative faculty, which, therefore, receives (as in dreams) an astonishing stimulus, and presents some past scene selected by accidental association with exceeding vivid- ness. Often a whole series of such scenes is presented, and then the drowning man reports that his whole former life passed rapidly before him ; but that is, no doubt, only, the manner in which so carious a succession of very bright memories would be likely to present itself.
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