Varia

An Example of Versprechen. — I had hardly finished Freud's Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life, when I experienced the following mistake in speech.

My wife and I were walking out one afternoon when we passed a house in front of which stood a very fine magnolia tree. I stopped and exclaimed, “What a fine mongolia tree.” My wife laughingly corrected me, saying: “You mean, magnolia tree.” I recognized instantly my mistake. It occurred to me at once that here was an opportunity for me to attempt an analysis on the lines so clearly set forth in the remarkable book just referred to.

The interpretation of the “lapsus linguae” is as follows, and as the explanation gave me such entire satisfaction, it is hardly posisble that it can be incorrect.

I turned the word mongolia over and over in my mind, trying to connect or associate it with some experience or impression, previously recorded. In so doing, the word separated into mon and golia and I was struck with the fact that mon was the French word for my. Then I thought, my golia, which recalled an expression I had once seen in a pamphlet that ran, “my golgothia I still have thee,” used in reference to the Diplomatic Service. I thereupon recalled the fact that a few years before I had studied to prepare myself to be examined for that work and that I had then learned for the first time, among other things, that Urga was the capital of mongolia. Here then, was a close association between Mongolia and Diplomatic Service. Now I failed to pass those examinations and was keenly disappointed and had fallen into a mental attitude of deprecating the diplomatic profession, in an attempt to deceive myself. I now compared the spelling of mongolia with magnolia and I realized that I had twisted two letters of magnolia, gn, to ng in mongolia. ng is a common expression for no good. Diplomatic Service in my mind is no good. I have always been at heart a strong partisan of the Northern States of the Union, and must confess that I entertain at times