By those of my friends who happen to know that I sometimes amuse
myself with hypnotism, mind reading and kindred phenomena, I am
frequently asked if I have a clear conception of the nature of
whatever principle underlies them. To this question I always reply
that I neither have nor desire to have. I am no investigator with an
ear at the key-hole of Nature's workshop, trying with vulgar curiosity
to steal the secrets of her trade. The interests of science are as
little to me as mine seem to have been to science.
Doubtless the phenomena in question are simple enough, and in no way
transcend our powers of comprehension if only we could find the clew;
but for my part I prefer not to find it, for I am of a singularly
romantic disposition, deriving more gratification from mystery than
from knowledge. It was commonly remarked of me when I was a child
that my big blue eyes appeared to have been made rather to look into
than look out of--such was their dreamful beauty, and in my frequent
periods of abstraction, their indifference to what was going on. In
those peculiarities they resembled, I venture to think, the soul which
lies behind them, always more intent upon some lovely conception which
it has created in its own image than concerned about the laws of
nature and the material frame of things. All this, irrelevant and
egotistic as it may seem, is related by way of accounting for the
meagreness of the light that I am able to throw upon a subject that
has engaged so much of my attention, and concerning which there is so
keen and general a curiosity. With my powers and opportunities,
another person might doubtless have an explanation for much of what I
present simply as narrative.
My first knowledge that I possessed unusual powers came to me in my
fourteenth year, when at school. Happening one day to have forgotten
to bring my noon-day luncheon, I gazed longingly at that of a small
girl who was preparing to eat hers. Looking up, her eyes met mine and
she seemed unable to withdraw them. After a moment of hesitancy she
came forward in an absent kind of way and without a word surrendered
her little basket with its tempting contents and walked away.
Inexpressibly pleased, I relieved my hunger and destroyed the basket.
After that I had not the trouble to bring a luncheon for myself: that
little girl was my daily purveyor; and not infrequently in satisfying
my simple need from her frugal store I combined pleasure and profit by
constraining her attendance at the feast and making misleading proffer
of the viands, which eventually I consumed to the last fragment. The
girl was always persuaded that she had eaten all herself; and later in
the day her tearful complaints of hunger surprised the teacher,
entertained the pupils, earned for her the sobriquet of Greedy-Gut and
filled me with a peace past understanding.
A disagreeable feature of this otherwise satisfactory condition of
things was the necessary secrecy: the transfer of the luncheon, for
example, had to be made at some distance from the madding crowd, in a
wood; and I blush to think of the many other unworthy subterfuges
entailed by the situation. As I was (and am) naturally of a frank and
open disposition, these became more and more irksome, and but for the
reluctance of my parents to renounce the obvious advantages of the new
regime I would gladly have reverted to the old. The plan that I
finally adopted to free myself from the consequences of my own powers
excited a wide and keen interest at the time, and that part of it
which consisted in the death of the girl was severely condemned, but
it is hardly pertinent to the scope of this narrative.
For some years afterward I had little opportunity to practice
hypnotism; such small essays as I made at it were commonly barren of
other recognition than solitary confinement on a bread-and-water diet;
sometimes, indeed, they elicited nothing better than the
cat-o'-nine-tails. It was when I was about to leave the scene of
these small disappointments that my one really important feat was
performed.
I had been called into the warden's office and given a suit of
civilian's clothing, a trifling sum of money and a great deal of
advice, which I am bound to confess was of a much better quality than
the clothing. As I was passing out of the gate into the light of
freedom I suddenly turned and looking the warden gravely in the eye,
soon had him in control.
"You are an ostrich," I said.
At the post-mortem examination the stomach was found to contain a
great quantity of indigestible articles mostly of wood or metal.
Stuck fast in the esophagus and constituting, according to the
Coroner's jury, the immediate cause of death, one door-knob.
I was by nature a good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into
the great world from which I had been so long secluded I could not
help remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from
the niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons;
and I knew of no reason to think they had reformed.
On the road between Succotash Hill and South Asphyxia is a little open
field which once contained a shanty known as Pete Gilstrap's Place,
where that gentleman used to murder travelers for a living. The death
of Mr. Gilstrap and the diversion of nearly all the travel to another
road occurred so nearly at the same time that no one has ever been
able to say which was cause and which effect. Anyhow, the field was
now a desolation and the Place had long been burned. It was while
going afoot to South Asphyxia, the home of my childhood, that I found
both my parents on their way to the Hill. They had hitched their team
and were eating luncheon under an oak tree in the center of the field.
The sight of the luncheon called up painful memories of my school
days and roused the sleeping lion in my breast. Approaching the
guilty couple, who at once recognized me, I ventured to suggest that I
share their hospitality.
"Of this cheer, my son," said the author of my being, with
characteristic pomposity, which age had not withered, "there is
sufficient for but two. I am not, I hope, insensible to the
hunger-light in your eyes, but--"
My father has never completed that sentence; what he mistook for
hunger-light was simply the earnest gaze of the hypnotist. In a few
seconds he was at my service. A few more sufficed for the lady, and
the dictates of a just resentment could be carried into effect. "My
former father," I said, "I presume that it is known to you that you
and this lady are no longer what you were?"
"I have observed a certain subtle change," was the rather dubious
reply of the old gentleman; "it is perhaps attributable to age."
"It is more than that," I explained; "it goes to character--to
species. You and the lady here are, in truth, two broncos--wild
stallions both, and unfriendly."
"Why, John," exclaimed my dear mother, "you don't mean to say that I
am--"
"Madam," I replied, solemnly, fixing my eyes again upon hers, "you
are."
Scarcely had the words fallen from my lips when she dropped upon her
hands and knees, and backing up to the old man squealed like a demon
and delivered a vicious kick upon his shin! An instant later he was
himself down on all-fours, headed away from her and flinging his feet
at her simultaneously and successively. With equal earnestness but
inferior agility, because of her hampering body-gear, she plied her
own. Their flying legs crossed and mingled in the most bewildering
way; their feet sometimes meeting squarely in midair, their bodies
thrust forward, falling flat upon the ground and for a moment
helpless. On recovering themselves they would resume the combat,
uttering their frenzy in the nameless sounds of the furious brutes
which they believed themselves to be--the whole region rang with their
clamor! Round and round they wheeled, the blows of their feet falling
"like lightnings from the mountain cloud." They plunged and reared
backward upon their knees, struck savagely at each other with awkward
descending blows of both fists at once, and dropped again upon their
hands as if unable to maintain the upright position of the body.
Grass and pebbles were torn from the soil by hands and feet; clothing,
hair, faces inexpressibly defiled with dust and blood. Wild,
inarticulate screams of rage attested the delivery of the blows;
groans, grunts and gasps their receipt. Nothing more truly military
was ever seen at Gettysburg or Waterloo: the valor of my dear parents
in the hour of danger can never cease to be to me a source of pride
and gratification. At the end of it all two battered, tattered,
bloody and fragmentary vestiges of mortality attested the solemn fact
that the author of the strife was an orphan.
Arrested for provoking a breach of the peace, I was, and have ever
since been, tried in the Court of Technicalities and Continuances
whence, after fifteen years of proceedings, my attorney is moving
heaven and earth to get the case taken to the Court of Remandment for
New Trials.
Such are a few of my principal experiments in the mysterious force or
agency known as hypnotic suggestion. Whether or not it could be
employed by a bad man for an unworthy purpose I am unable to say.