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VOLUME XVI.
SCIENCE MADE
BRAIN NORMAL
SCIENCE has reclaimed another
person from the crime world,
closed a chapter of wildness and
converted an irresponsible into a hu
man being of moral strength. In the
awakening of Jeannie Gordon, through
the professional ministrations of Dr.
H. N. Rowell, a girl who was a run
away and later a thief has been re
stored to society. Her disturbed brain
for years whirled her out of the do
mestic orbit and she was heading for
state prison when the surgeon’s knife
and the mental healer saved her from
herself.
SLIM shadow with a
shock of tumbled brown
hair and eyes that were
lighted with a fever fire
came up from out the
parched grass at San
chez cattle ranch, near
Tia Jauna, Mexico, one
afternoon as the yellow
sun’s burning rays lay
aslant the red mesa land.
The copper faced cowboys, sitting at
the door of their shack, looked up
with astonishment at the haggard lit
tle stranger. They saw a bare five
feet of frailty in sadly worn shoes and
trousers, with wrists no bigger than
two fingers, hands of a child and a
face that didn’t seem to belong to thi
rest of the shadow.
“Long way from home, sonny, ain't
yuh?" asked one of the men, who had
left a real name in the east and be
come “Poker Chip Charley” for cow
punching purposes, "and a bit hungry,
too, I guess; eh?”
And without waiting for an answer
they took the shadow in and seated it
at a table and fed it all it could eat,
which is a hospitality denied none in
the land of longhorns.
A week thereafter the shadow lay
upon a cot in the big ranch house,
with a bandage about the temples and
the delicate heart pumping so feebly
that only the trained ear of a nurse,
who had been brought up from Tia
Jauna, could hear it.
“How did it happen?” she asked.
“Why, miss,” said “Poker Chip
Charley,” “the youngster called his
self the kid cowboy, and he wanted to
hook a leg on the friskiest horse on
the ranch just to show us what he
could do. So, miss, we give in and
put him aboard Dulcie, which ain’t no
horse for a kid to ride, but he did
ride him, the kid did. Never saw any
thing like it, but the kid wa’nt beefy
enough to stick, Dulcie bucked and
the kid landed on the head.”
Kid “Cowboy” a Girl.
That night the boss of Sanchez
ranch went out to the cowboys’ shack
with a bit of news. The kid cowboy
was a girl, an innocent little runaway
from the states. Her name was Jean
nie Gordon.
Right here, as well as anywhere,
the opening chapter of this girl’s
strange life may be told. It may be
called the chapter of her moral sleep,
as the other chapter is properly called
that of her awakening.
Jeannie Vivien Claire Gordon—story
booky sort of name, but rightfully
111 -
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/ ,r --~
1
“She slid down a drain pipe from a
third story window."
hers by birth and christening—became
an orphan in her infancy. Her par
ents were West Virginians. They left
the child in the care of a kind heart
ed nurse, who took her to California
When Jeannie had grown into knee
length pinafores Judge and Mrs. Lil
lian Barclay of Los Angeles took a
liking to the bright-eyed little one and
adopted her. They rechristened her
Bessie Barclay and she took her place
In their home as a daughter.
Shu Snumtmt Sulbtin.
NUMBER 46.
By the time she had grown Into
early teens she was seized with a
stronger wanderlust. It would not let
her rest. She seemed bewitched by
the ever-moving light of some will-o’-
the-wisp. Powerless to control her
self, she fled one day to Long Beach,
where in boy's clothes that she had
contrived to borrow, she found work
in a bowling alley. A police alarm
was sent far and wide. The girl read
it, but did not return.
A woman probation officer, much
taken by the pretty child, discovered
her disguise and she was taken back
to Judge Barclay’s home, and with a
solicitude for her future they placed
her under the kindly tutorship of the
sisters at a convent.
Her brain having been set awhirl in
some strange way, and in its wild
working having cast her out of the
domestic orbit, she was now beyond
control. She cut out the lock of a
door that imprisoned her and,' heed
less of danger, she slid down a drain
pipe from a third-story window and
scaled the convent walls. Taking to
the highway she reached the open
country before dawn. She found a
companion of her own years and sex
and together, dressed as boys, they
reamed through southern California,
living as tramps and learning how to
ride the slant-hipped ponies on the
ranches like vaqueros.
Again the hand of authority fell
upon the shoulders of the flyaway
child, and she was carried back under
restraint to the home which she had
abandoned.
The ingenuity of a mind keyed to
the abnormal is more than a match for
Jeannie dressed in boy’s clothes, be
came a thief.
a perfectly sane person. Even while
Judge Barclay was planning anew for
the girl’s welfare she was wafted
away like a thistledown in the wind.
This time she was carried far across
the border into the wild country of
Mexico and to the ranch beyond Tia
Juana. Her voluntary return to Los
Angeles after this wide swing in the
open was inspired as is now known,
to a temporary restoration of those
faculties which guide the morals. She
went at once to Judge Barclay’s home.
She was calm and penitent. Mrs. Bar
clay had died while the girl’s last es
capade was running its course, and
the judge was in no mood for a recon
ciliation with one given to such wild
vagaries. He did not know the girl
was irresponsible. He received her
formally, if not coldly, gave her a
letter to the manager of the canneries
down at San Jose and money for her
immediate expenses and transporta
tion, and sent her from his door with
a good wish for her happiness some
what severely expressed.
Became a Thief.
The girl’s erratic path of wild child
ish adventure at this moment diverged
into one pitifully crooked and crim
inal. Jeannie became a thief. She
stole things without reference to their
value or her needs. When she want
ed anything, or thought she did, her
cunning mind directed her ready fin
gers to the place where it could be
found. It was not long before she be
gan taking things she did not want—
knick-knacks which she threw away or
left In hiding places on the premises,
there to be found by others.
In San Francisco, whither she drift
ed with light fingers, working along
the way, she was arrested. Because of
her tender years and the evidence
that her form of criminality was far
removed from the sordid she was sent
to St. Catherine’s home. In a week
IRWINTON, WILKINSON COUNTY, GEORGIA, FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 1911.
she was out and roaming to tne south
in boy’s clothes.
Then, as medico-criminal records
have shown in other cases, the switch
controlling the nerve wires of this
girl’s brain became set for a brief re
turn to the normal. She changed ab
solutely. Those who did not know at
tributed it to the influence of tracts
and such moral teachings as is given
collectively to inmates of Institutions,
including jails. They were not aware
that it was periodic, and quite inci
dental.
During this mental lull much of her
gentleness and girlhood sweetness and
charm for the time returned. Mr.
Thurnherr, a young Berkeley business
man, met and fell in love with her
and made her his wife. Before they
had returned from a brief honeymoon
the switch was on again, intensifying
her cunning and making her boldly
criminal where before she had been
cautious.
As Kleptomaniac.
One evening as he sat reading and
she embroidered, he fell asleep; quick
as a cat she slipped out of the house
and into a neighbor’s, where she stole
some pretty articles of no use to
herself.
“Where have you been, my dear?"
“The kid cowboy was a girl—a run
away.”
asked the husband, waking as she re
turned. z
“I just ran over to Mrs. ’s to
show her my embroidery,” was the
quick reply. “She is anxious to work
a pattern like it.”
It was about this time when some
Silverware which she had stolen and
buried was found^ and the young wife
was under arrest, that Dr. H. N. Row
ell, who long had watched her career
from a distance, slipped actively into
her life. All the stories he had heard
concerning her pointed to tendencies
and gave confirmation to his suspi
cions that her abnormality was an in
cident that could be corrected.
Surgery Put to Work.
He made a plea for her probation
and became her bondsman. With the
consent of the authorities, as well as
that of herself and her husband, he
took the young woman —she is now
only 22 years old —under his profes
sional care.
Dr. Rowell's theory was that after
the pressure on the brain was relieved,
a systematic daily hypnotizing of his
patient would cure her. Her sensitive
subconscious mind was to be instruct
ed to forget the past that had now
ceased to be vital and turn toward the
perfectly new future and all its pos
sibilities.
Victory for Science.
At first it seemed as if the strenu
ous surgical and mental trial she had
been through was to influence her but
temporarily. But it is beginning to be
evident that the old Jeannie Gordon
is as dead as the little Barclay girl
who ran away so many years ago in
a ruffled apron and became a^boy.
Mrs. Thrunherr is interested in
things she never.cared about before,
never thought of or appeared to no
tice. Always strikipgly pretty in a
boyish way, and with unusually beau
tiful, pleading hazel eyes, the young
woman has an expression like that of
a child taken to see the ocean for the
first time—a sort of rapt wonder.
And now that the awakening has
come after all these years, and the
child -of impish impulse and the girl
whose brain reeled her always toward
the vortex have ceased to exist, she
remembers it as one recalls an ugly
dream phantom.
“I am not the same girl at all,” she
says, with eyes that look straight into
yours—eyes that are soft, honest, sin
cere. “It used to be so strange. 1
lived a nightmare —a wild, uncertain
existence which was as bereft of or
derly sequence as the jumble of impos
sible things through which we drift
in unhappy dreams. Oh, how differ
ent it is since the change came. The
world seems so much quieter, and now
I can rest. Without half trying, I can
be gsod like other people.”—New
York World.
We
Got to
MOVE!
Why not come in and look
at the low prices we are
making on our present stock
of goods.
Did You Ever Move?
The trouble and expense
attached--the worries===are
many. We’ve got lots of
goods—stuff that will just
help you over the summer—
and as it’s late we are going
to cut the price—then, too,
we don’t want to move these
goods. Come, let’s look
these values over. If you
do we sure will sell you
your needs.
Our new home after Sept,
i, entire “Ohlman Building.”
Your friends,
W. S. Myrick & Co.
SI.OO A YEAR.
