Speaker 1: The Hypnotist by Ambrose Bierce, 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 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 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 dorknob. 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 with us. 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. Two 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 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 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 Bierce