“Men with Queer Nerves” was widely reprinted, appearing in dozens of newspapers throughout the United States, informing many readers for the first time about the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine. This was not, however, the first newspaper story about them. Seventeen years earlier, in 1861, the Reverend M. R. Keep published a story in the Aroostook Pioneer titled “Jumping Frenchmen of Madawaska”, which was reprinted several times, sometimes using the title “Jumping Frenchmen of Canada”. Keep reports that one quarter to one third of the French Canadians in the area of Madawaska, Maine, are jumpers. Jumping, as Keep describes it, involves involuntary leaping, screaming, striking, and throwing, performed without any sense of caution or self-control. Although the Frenchmen will sometimes “jump” (that is, startle) each other for amusement, the act of being jumped is both painful and a source of considerable anxiety. “The victims dread it, and will often beg of their comrades not to jump them”, Keep writes. He ends his story with an account of one Mr. Blake of Portage Lake who had two Jumping Frenchmen working for him. One Frenchman was jumping the other all winter until his victim accidentally struck him in the face and eyes with an axe, an injury that left him incapacitated for a fortnight. Several of the newspapers that reprinted this story swapped “Mr. Blake” for “Mr. Blade”, presumably to introduce an axe-themed pun into a story that most readers would view as broadly comedic. Or perhaps it was an unconscious slip.