After losing his first wife,
the father was twice remarried, and even the third wife has
divorced him. He had a brother who, after going insane and
killing two laborers, committed suicide. His grandmother, and
probably also a cousin, were insane. Two of his sisters were of
a nervous and hysterical type and said to have attacks of
aphonia. A child by his second wife is epileptic. This man
gives us a long account of his own defective heredity and of his
own physical ailments. He does not recognize the fact, however,
that he also is mentally below par. We have seen him on numerous
occasions and known of his great activity in the courts, and have
attempted to size him up. He is undoubtedly a constitutional
inferior, in poor general physical condition and subject to
episodic mental states. One would be inclined to call him a
semi-responsible individual with mild delusions, defective
reasoning ability, great energy in self-assertion, and of
combative disposition. This latter shows itself in his voluble
emphasis on the alleged ill treatment of himself and family, even
by his wives. He is never physically violent. On account of
false accusations, whether delusional or not, he got at least one
pastor into a peck of trouble, and, strangely enough, his wives
have been involved in some other church embroilments when his own
character was called severely into question.
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