THRU THE TURNSTILE: Tales of My Two Centuries

Thru the Turnstile (you'll learn that the wrong direction may be the right one) are the nickel memories of Alice Cavy Williams who was born in 1892. Her father became a doctor and with his closest friend, the famous neuropsychologist Morton Prince, studied under Oliver Wendell Holmes. Alice, always called Punkin, had a very ordinary but loving childhood in Boston; she went ""to school with two Cabots and never felt warmer for it,"" and spent summers on Nantucket. The ""solemncholy"" William James appears in and out of their home and all three doctors, her father more reluctantly, were interested in the new phenomena from hynotism to Hatha Yogi. In fact they cured a native who had lockjaw with hypnotism. Alice Williams shares it all in small insets bringing back the small pleasures of a pony and a dog and some larger curiosities--a hermit, a mystic, gypsies. It's not only ""realsome"" but as bright and friendly and fresh as a spray of sweet william.