Not Myself | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 19, 1878

Not Myself.

If not myself, then, who was I?

Just so. Who was I? That's the question. Perhaps, friendly reader, if I take you into my confidence, you will help me to see the matter in a clearer light, for I am just now in much obscurity.

"I was not myself" at the time. My friends said so, and I said so. It was my—and their—only apology and excuse.

"Mr. Jones is prudent and clear-headed and never would have done it if he had been himself." Every one assented to this, and I accepted the declaration as true.

But how came it that I was not myself?

Had I been to a "circle" or "seance"? No; for I have no fancy for the sound of footfalls on the boundaries of another world. My business for the present is with embodied, and not with a vagrant crew of disembodied spirits. Was I suffering from temporary insanity? No one, so far as I know, ever hinted such a thing.

Let me tell you the whole story. I think it will interest you.

I am, or was, a merchant. For many years my business, under prudent management, had grown steadily, until the house over which I presided was known as one of the most prominent in the city. There are two pivots in every mercantile business on which success or failure rests—buying and selling. If the buyer of an establishment thoroughly understands his role, and the salesmen theirs, success, in ordinary circumstances, is almost sure; but if either be seriously at fault, ruin is quite as certain.

I was, and always had been the buyer in our house. To this part of the business I gave careful and systematic attention, keeping myself posted in regard to stocks of leading goods in market, and the prospect of advancing or receding rates. To-day I would buy freely, when others hesitated, because I was better informed, or had, from long observation and experience, a kind of intuition as to the future prices; but to-morrow found me cautious on a different line of goods, and I touched them lightly while others bought heavily. The result nearly always proved my skill or prescience.

There was no guess-work in all this. I was educated to it; and when I went to auction, or examined the importer's samples, I knew to a fraction what the article offered for sale was worth in the market—whether stocks in first hands were large or small, and how much it would be prudent to buy.

During a period of ten years, in which scarcely a day passed that I did not go to auction or visit the sample-room or store of some manufacturer, commission merchant or importer, no serious mistake in buying was made. In consequence, we were never caught with a large stock of anything on a falling market, but often got single advantages when prices went up.

But something came over me about three years ago, and every now and then I would make a slight mistake that annoyed me exceedingly, for I had grown proud of my skill and reputation as a buyer.

The first time this occurred, the mistake was so palpable that I made no attempt to excuse it. The case of goods I bought fell six cents a yard on the very next day. Every clerk in the store knew there would be a fall, and so did I. And yet, when the case was put up, I bid it off in my usual confident tone—the error flashing on me when it was too late for repair.

"I don't understand this," I said to myself, greatly annoyed by the incident. "What could have possessed me? The blunder has no excuse."

And yet, strange to say, within a month I committed a worse blunder. Now, if I had fallen into habits of intemperance, the thing would have been plain. But this was not the case. I am temperate in all things, in eating as in drinking. I don't mean that I am what is called a teetotaler for I consider myself a rational being, and so put myself under the government of reason, and not in bonds. I take a glass of wine, or ale, or brandy whenever I think I need it, and expect to continue doing so until I find that it does me harm, which is not yet. I can stop whenever I please.

Well, as I was saying, within a month I committed a worse blunder; stocking our shelves with a line of goods that fell twenty per cent, I was annoyed, bewildered, confounded.

"What has come over me? Am I losing my senses?" So I talked to myself. "There is n't a buyer of six months' experience that wouldn't have known better."

I put as good a face on the matter as possible, and resolved never to be "caught napping again." Naturally, I was sensitive about the mistakes committed, and the remotest allusion to them annoyed me.

One of my partners, whose faith in my judgment, these lapses had disturbed, ventured now and then a word of caution, especially when I was about going to some large sale. I was never able to repress my irritation at this; and we had sharp words now and then, in consequence.

A great sale of goods, in our line, had been advertised in New York; the invoices covering, in the aggregate, nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

"Buy cautiously," said the partner whose faith in my judgment had been impaired.

"Hadn't you better go yourself?" I answered testily.

He looked at me with troubled eyes but made no response.

I went over to New York in the evening train, in company with several merchants on the same errand with myself. They talked up the matter of stocks of goods, the effect this heavy sale would have on prices, and the probable future of the market. Opinions differed. Some held that prices would advance, and some that they would recede. I listened and said but little, as was my habit; but carefully weighed all the pros and cons, and considering all the reasons urged on both sides.

When I reached New York, my mind was made up to buy with great caution. It was barely possible that one or two leading capitalists in the trade might purchase heavily on speculation, and hold for an advance; in that case, other buyers would make a good thing of it. But if the large stock went into several hands, each taking pretty freely, some, more eager to sell than the rest, might press the market, and cause a serious decline in prices.

I saw this clearly, and resolved to purchase only to the extent of supplying our immediate wants. But during the evening this purpose was disturbed, and a different view adopted.

"Come to my room," said a well-known merchant who had been with me in the cars. It was after supper. "Two or three friends are to drop in for a talk over a bottle of wine about to-morrow's sale."

I went with him to his room. In a short time two merchants from my own city, and one resident in New York, joined us. Wine and cigars were ordered, and we spent two or three hours together, drinking, smoking and talking about the sale. I have never been able to recall the data and reasonings by which I passed to the conclusion that my role on the next day was to be that of a heavy, instead of a light buyer; but when I went to bed that night, such was my fixed purpose. I lay awake for a long time, pleasing my fancy with golden results that were sure to come from to-morrow's business. I counted the profits of our houses tens of thousands of dollars. Thought ran riot over the gains I would not fail to secure.

In thinking back to this night, I have always felt that I was not my real self—that in some way, the perception of reasoning of another mind was superinduced upon my own—that my experience, clear judgment and prudence were lost for a period, and that my mental powers were operated by some volition foreign to my own.

I was not myself. That is certain. I was not fully myself on next morning. On rising, my head ached in a dull way, and my brain was slightly confused. It was not clear to me that I was to make the fortune of our house by bidding off at the coming sale to the amount of fifty or a hundred thousand dollars. The wet blanket of doubt chilled my night's enthusiasm.

But a glass of brandy and water, followed by coffee and breakfast, cleared my head, gave life to my pulse, and tension to my nerves. I met my friend of the evening before, and we spent an hour previous to the sale in talking up the business of the day, and then, after emptying a bottle or two of wine, repaired to the auction rooms, which we found crowded with merchants from all parts of the country.

I was in a state of confidence and exhilaration—never had a clearer head, so it seemed, nor saw my way more distinctly. Terms were announced, and the sale began. Bidding was cautious at-first, and a few lots were struck down at figures so low that I remember feeling disturbed as well as surprised. But the impression faded in a moment. On the next lot, I bid at the figure last obtained. Some one advanced, and I went higher promptly. The goods were mine, no one going above me.

"Do you take the whole lot—forty cases?" asked the auctioneer.

"The whole," I answered in a confident way that caused many to turn and look at me.

The sale went on, growing more spirited as it progressed, new bidders ventured in at every successive lot. I forgot everything but my purpose to buy heavily, and make the fortune of our house. A single idea possessed me, and that was the certain great advance in the price of the goods now being sold. I was as sure of this as of my existence, and felt a kind of contempt for the timid buyers, who, with the opportunity of a hundred cases, took only five or ten.

At two o'clock, I left the heated auction rooms with flushed face and throbbing temples. As the fresh air struck upon me with its grateful coolness, I seemed to pass into a new world of thought and perception. I was myself again—my clear headed self, poised amid my own business experience and convictions.

What a shiver ran down to my heart as the fact that I had just bid over sixty thousand dollars on a single line of goods looked me darkly in the face.

"Impossible!" I exclaimed, standing still, and catching my breath, for I seemed, for the instant, as if in a vacuum.

"Impossible! That would be ruin!"

And it was ruin! On the day after the sale, the goods that I had bought for a rise, fell twenty per cent., and steadily declined day after day, until they were fifty per cent. below the figures I had paid.

Stunned and bewildered by the peril in which my blind recklessness had plunged our house, we failed to do the only wise thing, that was to sell at once, and accept the inevitable loss of twelve thousand dollars. But none of us had the courage to look that disaster fairly in the face.

"The market will surely rally," we said. But it did not rally. We struggled with our fate, resorting to all kinds of expedients to keep our ship afloat—plunging, buffeting; gasping amid the waves, until in storm and darkness the goodly vessel was stranded.

We saved little from the wreck. My partners gathered what to them remained, and started on a new business venture, leaving me out.

Yes, I was left out—out in the cold, where I have been shivering ever since.

I was not myself when I bid so blindly. That my partners said—our business friends, who pitied us, said—and that I said emphatically.

But, if not myself, who was I? You see, reader, I am back to where I started. Ever since the memorable day when I went to that auction room, and acted the blind, over-confident, reckless speculator, instead of the cool, experienced, cautious business man that I am and was, I have puzzled my brain over this question. Can evil spirits, who love to do us harm, get, through some strange process unknown to us, a temporary possession of our mental machinery, and drive it to our hurt or ruin? I have thought so sometimes. What happened to me, I have seen happen to others at various times in my life. One of the shrewd est and most wary buyers I ever knew, lost, suddenly, as I did, on a single occasion, his clearness of judgment, and involved his house in a heavy loss. "I don't know what came over me," he said, when I asked him about it. "Somehow, I was not myself on that day." He looked puzzled and worried when he said this.

A thought comes flashing across the darkness of my mind as I write, and startles me! Can it bring the solution? Let me ponder. My brain did not have its normal steadiness and coolness on that night at the hotel, when we discussed the coming sale. Why! Was it the fatigue of riding in the cars? No! I was used to that, and not fatigued. The supper? Of course not. The wine?

I have walked the floor, since writing the last sentence, in much agitation, and now sit down in a calmer state and with a clearer brain. I am afraid it was the wine! My judgment was clear when I went, on the night before the sale, to the room of my business friend, and clouded when I left it, and yet it seemed clear. That is strange. It was an erroneous judgment, and false in the light of my own true intelligence, and yet it looked fair to me that night. Perception was inverted. How? Why? I was not my own self.

On the next morning, this false judgment was in a wavering state. The convictions of the night previous were not so clear. I had disturbed doubts and troublesome questionings. I was by no means so confident that an advance in the market was to follow this large sale. What dispersed these doubts? What restored my confidence? Was it the nerve quieting brandy before, and the exhilarating wine after breakfast? Did they give back that abnormal state of the brain, the result of unnatural stimulus, through which I became, as it were, another, and not myself—acting the part of a blind and foolish speculator, instead of the wise and prudent merchant that in my real self I was?

How is it? I am startled and shocked at such a view of the case. Strange, that this old saying should just now intrude itself—"When the wine is in, the wit is out!" There is no gainsaying that. And I, too, am out—out in the cold, and all for what? a glass or two of brandy, and a bottle of wine?

You have the whole story, reader. Do you think it was the wine? —Sel.