The hypnotist, by Ambrose Beers, 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
keyhole 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
clue. 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 duty, 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, then 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 meagerness 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 noonday 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 matting 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 Catanine tales. 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
mister 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 bronchos, 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 chin. 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 mid air. Their bodies thrust
forward, falling flat upon the round, 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. End of the Hypnotist by Ambrose Bers