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
_régime_ 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 oesophagus 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.