Twitching

“ Some weeks or months after the injury, the patient complains of increasing hyperaesthesia and of neuralgic pains in the course of the nerve. The nerve is very sensitive to pressure, and, if superficial, may be felt to be swollen. The associated muscles are wasted and weak, and are subject to twitchings. There are also trophic disturbances. It is rare to have complete sensory and motor paralysis. The disease is commonest in the nerves of the upper extremity, and the hand may become crippled and useless. ”

“ If, when the ordinary twitch is twisted up tight, its stick be struck or jerked, as some do, on the animal moving, it will doubtless have a deterrent effect, as well as the one produced by the brutal and needless infliction of continued pain. ”

“ On ordinary occasions, there was a solemnity, a coldness, in this sombre vestibule; but to-night a strange electric activity seemed to have been breathed upon the atmosphere. Women with flushed faces and men with feverishly bright eyes hurried to and fro in an irrepressible, aimless agitation. A blending of dread and hysterical anticipation was stamped upon every face. People stopped one another with nervous, unstrung gesture and odd, disjointed sentences. ”

“ A fly settles on your hand while you are writing, the faint thrill which accompanies this excitation of your sensory nerve gives the specific sensation of tickling, and this causes you to move your hand with a jerk. If your attention is preoccupied, you are said to be unconscious of the sensation, and the jerk of your hand is called a reflex action; but if your attention is not preoccupied, or if the thrill is vivid, you are said to be conscious of the sensation, and the action is no longer reflex, but volitional. ”

“ The snap of a twig, the sudden flight of a bird, the scurry of something small and harmless, the sough of the wind (like a deep breath) , the rustle of leaves, the pad-pad of one's own feet, even the thumping of one's own heart—all these sounds are instantly translated into a sign of some terrible, carnivorous menace. One's sense of hearing becomes painfully acute—almost raw! One's nerves become keyed up to the breaking point. One's feeling of immense loneliness is appalling—and palpable! ”

“ Soon the swift motion lulls our brains into the accustomed muddle; we seem to be dragged along like a miserable thread pulled through the eye of an ever-lasting needle,—through and through, and never through,—while here and there, like painful knots, the dépôts stop us, the poor thread is arrested for a minute, and then the pulling begins again. ”

“ If I sit for a few minutes, flutter, flutter, begins every nerve in my whole system. My heart throbs as if from machinery, and the only thing, it seems, that can save me, is to leap up and walk—walk furiously, in any direction. Passing by objects swiftly,—trees, men, and women—that gives me a relief, that headlong motion disturbs the beat of the pendulum, and whirling wheels. ”

“ On every stick there's a witch astride, The string you see to her leg is tied. She will do a mischief if she can, But the string is held by a careful man, And whenever the evil-minded witch Would cut come caper, he gives a twitch. ”

“ He grows silent as he examines the troublesome twig; then he rushes away as if he had made up what he calls his mind. In a few minutes, having left his mouthful at the cache, he reappears in the same path. He is silent now, and look! he is not running in his wonted breakneck fashion, but following his trail in an exploring kind of way. So he reaches the twig that hindered him, swears at it again, and cuts it with his teeth. Resting his chin between his forepaws, he follows the falling twig, his eyes shining, till it strikes the ground beside me, when he snickers his satisfaction. ”

“ We strain our eyes into the night, and even as we do so, something supernaturally tall—black, gaunt, with a white plume waving from its haughty head—advances slowly towards us, from out the gloom. I feel paralyzed with fright, although instinct tells me it is not the thing. ”

“ A dance of life, where men ranged on one side and women on the other, advance, retreat, cross, join hands, break into whirling knots of twos and fours, separate, re-form in line, to blend again into a seeming maze of orderly confusion — a whirl of very madness, yet with method in it — the intoxication of movement and sound poured out in time and measure. ”

“ Then, with a heavy sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking at it, with his head down; he does a stitch or two, having the air of a man so lost in sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to life. Then, turning abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving his head, like an animal pacing its cage. ”

“ If the tensions change from moment to moment entirely, we have a broken, a fragmentary effect, as that of zigzag, where all is dropping and picking up again of associated motions; in the straight line, much prolonged, we have a gradual and inexorable rending of these tendencies to associated movements. ”

“ There seemed a tension in the air—as if something was going to snap. Doubtless you have often felt it—a sensation as though pins and needles were pricking you all over. As though you wanted to scream—to cry out—against an uncertain sensation that gripped you. ”

“ If I stumble as I run, the sensation of falling provokes a movement of the hands towards the direction of the fall, the effect of which is to shield the body from too sudden a shock. If a cinder enter my eye, its lids close forcibly and a copious flow of tears tends to wash it out. ”

“ If now we supposed that what held good for movements held good for tensions of the same nature as the movements, these results would be in exact accordance with our suppositions. If a twisting movement attracts its image twisting movement, will a twist attract its image twist by means of its effect on the medium in which it is, and on which it exerts tension? ”

“ The Changeling.
A mother once had her child stolen from her by the elves. They took it out of the cradle and placed in its stead a changeling with a large head and staring eyes, that would do nothing but eat and drink. In her distress, she went to one of her neighbours and asked her advice. The neighbour told her to carry the changeling into the kitchen and seat it on the hearth, then to light a fire and boil some water in two egg-shells. That, she said, would make the changeling laugh, and if he once laughed, it would be all over with him. ”

“ Sometimes they would suddenly form a circle, and, with a simultaneous jerk of their heads, throw their long hair, so that the ends would for a moment all meet together in the centre; at other times, rolling their heads upon their shoulders with such astonishing velocity, that the eye was dazzled as they flew round and round, their hair radiating and diverging like the thrumbings of a mop, when trundled by some strong-limbed housemaid. ”

“ She now underwent a violent twitch, calculated to produce a startling effect on the nerves of the uninitiated, and with the deadliest animosity observed:
‘You can’t make a head and brains out of a brass knob with nothing in it. ”

“ Mental exhilaration gave place to bewilderment, as I saw that my hand was forging along faster than my thought could dictate, in apparent obedience to an independent will of its own—which bewilderment ripened into thoroughgoing mystification, as the hand dashed forward and back like a shuttle in a loom, with a velocity that seemed ever to be increasing. ”

“ Sometimes, with laughing eyes, she would whirl round like a boolee, or whirlwind. Then suddenly she would change to a stately measure. Then for variety's sake perform a series of swift gyrations, as if, indeed, a whirlwind devil had her in his grip. ”

“ And again the little drake answered for his sisters:
‘We cannot sleep, we wake and weep,
Sharp is the knife, to take our life;
The fire is hot, now boils the pot,
And so we wake, and lie and quake.’
‘Just the same answer,’ muttered the witch; ‘I think I’ll go in and see.’ So she opened the door gently, and seeing the two little ducklings sound asleep, she there and then killed them. ”

“ Some, if not all, of the Jumpers, are ticklish—exceedingly so—and are easily irritated by touching them in sensitive parts of the body. It would appear that in the evenings, in the woods, after the day's toil, in lieu of most other sources of amusement, the lumbermen have teased each other, by tickling, and playing, and startling timid ones, until there has developed this jumping, which, by mental contagion, and by practice, and by inheritance, has ripened into the full stage of the malady as it appears at the present hour. ”

“ Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise—perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it—and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end. ”

“ An inadvertent twist or a simple tangle quickly knots the thread, unless thoughtful patience rescues. Recklessness means hopeless disarray, and the soft fluff of warming color becomes unkempt disorder, a confused mass from which the thread broken again and again is extracted. ”

“ The only reason why we do not feel the startle or tickle in the case of insignificant sensations is partly its very small amount, partly our obtuseness. Professor Bain many years ago gave the name of the Law of Diffusion to this phenomenon of general discharge, and expressed it thus: "According as an impression is accompanied with Feeling, the aroused currents diffuse themselves over the brain,{371} leading to a general agitation of the moving organs, as well as affecting the viscera." ”

“ She clutches at it, but it sweeps past her, and is gone as the wave carries her ever onwards.
A sudden ebb in the resistless current as if by magic arrests her course. She feels herself dragged back along the line she has come. ”

“ Thus ticklishness would be the survival of long passed ancestral tentacular experience, which, originally a stimulation producing intense agitation and alarm, has now become merely a play activity and a source of keen pleasure. ”

“ Thus, when there are equal intervals but stress is absent, we more or less unconsciously supply it; when there are distinct stresses at irregular intervals we organize them into approximately regular intervals. We have in us by instinct and by development both the ability and also the need to draw forth rhythm wherever it is latent. Rhythm becomes one of our physical and mental pleasures, manifest in primitive dancing and balladry, sailors' chanteys, and the simple heave-ho's of concerted labor. ”

“ The feeling awakened by the nascent excitement of each alternative nerve-tract seems by its attractive or repulsive quality to determine whether the excitement shall abort or shall become complete. Where indecision is great, as before a dangerous leap, consciousness is agonizingly intense. Feeling, from this point of view, may be likened to a cross-section of the chain of nervous discharge, ascertaining the links already laid down, and groping among the fresh ends presented to it for the one which seems best to fit the case. ”

“ The fact that the effect of tickling becomes so well defined by, or soon after, the end of the second month, proves pretty conclusively that it is an inherited reflex; and the evolutionist naturally asks what it means, what its significance has been in the life of our ancestors. ”

“ As it is constantly twisted in one direction, it is evident that, after a while, a counter-twist must form which would render the passage of the weft between the cords difficult, if the cords could not be untwisted again. ”

“ Some outward or inward shock, some drastic swing of the psychic pendulum, must sooner or later restore the balance and bring the will back to that wavering and indecisive state—poised like the point of a compass between the two extremes—which seems to be its normal attitude. ”

“ How often did a tremble shake his frame, and cold drops of terror start upon his brow, when a sudden trampling of feet caused him to fear that something too dreadful to think of had even then occurred. ”

“ In later years I have not suffered from the fearsome malady, but even now, after fifty years of stage-life, I never play a new part without being overcome by a terrible nervousness and a torturing dread of forgetting my lines. Every nerve in my body seems to be dancing an independent jig on its own account. ”

“ Of course, this world is unnatural, which makes its effect on the nervous system more powerful, yet that does not explain the feeling of tension which I have been experiencing, the silent straining tension of an overloaded cable, the tension of a toy balloon overfull with air. ”

“ Drift, at first self-indulgent, then, perhaps, becoming selfish or vicious, but at any rate a feeble and enervating thing is the bane of how many lives? Perhaps our time, which presents so much to distract and occupy, makes drifting particularly easy. ”

“ Each bubble was so crowded with reflections from the zenith, that it must share its bursting sympathy, and marry with every bubble it overtook and touched, until it became so full of fantasies that it must merrily explode and be resolved into a drop and a sunbeam. ”

“ An intense degree of expectation may, in such cases, produce something indistinguishable from an actual sensation. This effect is seen in such common experiences as that the sight of food makes the mouth of a hungry man water; that the appearance of a surgical instrument produces a nascent sensation of pain; and that a threatening movement, giving a vivid anticipation of tickling, begets a feeling which closely approximates to the result of actual tickling. ”

“ You know how it goes slowly at first, then hesitates and sweeps on more and more quickly. Sometimes it upsets; and sometimes it shudders and strains and trembles and sways to one side and to the other, and at last rights itself and makes up its mind, and rushes on down the stream, usually to be entangled in the clump of rushes at the stream's next turn. ”