To be effective in case of surprise, the preparation must come from the habit-of-feeling, "_I must not be afraid; I must not be afraid._" No matter what the surprise, the emotional self must instantly assert, through habit, "_I must not be afraid_."
I have not had experience with "frog-accidents" to test the efficacy of my theory of schooled suggestion, but I have been subject to surprises that have been quite as fearful. As it happened, the incident I speak of was not perilous, but it had all the appearance of being so to me, when I was awakened from sleep, in a hotel in New York City, by suffocation, to find my room full of smoke that poured in through the transom and through the cracks of the door which was my only means of escape.
My room was on the fifth floor of the hotel, and the house had the reputation of being a "fire-trap."
As soon as my reasoning-self had time to take in the situation, the probability of being burned to death seemed almost certain; but before that happened--that is, before the reasoning-self had analyzed the situation--the habit-of-thought self had asserted many times, and constantly, "You _must not be afraid! you must not be afraid_"; and, as a result, I was _not afraid_; and the calm of the moment allowed me to measure chances and arrange expedients, as if there were no danger imminent.
It was a case of much smoke and little fire, but there were those in the hotel who were made very ill by the fright of it.
If I had always been free from the emotion of fear, and had not been a sorry victim to it in some special forms, "natural temperament" could be urged as a cause of the calm I enjoyed during the incident related above; but such is not the case. I have been subjected to shocks of various kinds, incident to an adventurous life, that have been powerful impressions for evil upon my emotional self, and it is personal experience of cure and relief that I am giving in support of my theory.
The experience of Mr. George Kennan, the Siberian traveler, and brilliant writer and lecturer, relative to fear and its cure, is singularly like my own, and was related to me in an exchange of personal confidences, last year.
The _Atlantic Monthly_ for May, 1897, contains an excellent account of Mr. Kennan's case, and I am permitted by the publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, to reprint it; which I have done under Appendix "B."