ling her fingers
till they cracked, like children playing "sweethearts," she never
winced, but actually seemed to like it, and trotted off well satisfied
with her fourth instalment of good health.

The next rubber who was introduced to me was not such a ruddy man,
being, in fact, somewhat saturnine in appearance; but I could quite
understand that he was, as he described himself, brimful of electricity.
His chevelure was like that on the little man we stick on the conductor
of an electrical machine and make each particular hair stand on end like
quills upon the fretful porcupine.

I could not for the life of me see the difference between this treatment
and simple mesmerism, except that it was much more rapid in its effects
than any magnetic treatment I have ever witnessed. Indeed, I frankly
confess I do not understand it now, though Mr. Ashman made me accept one
of his little books on Psychopathic healing, and told me I should see
the distinction when I had read it. I must be very dense, for I have
read it diligently through, and still fail to trace the distinction.

The man made a great impression on me. I felt he was just one of those
who would carry life into a sick room, and communicate vital
power--supposing it to be communicable--from the dumpy fingers of his
fat soft hand. The perambulator did not belie him. Numbers of pretty
black-eyed children were running about, and there was a Mrs. Ashman
somewhere among the poor patients in the back room. All the children
came to me except the eldest boy, who, his father told me in a
mysterious tone, had suffered some indignity at the hands of my cloth,
and dreaded a parson ever after. I believe my injudicious brother had
set him a long task (perhaps his Duty to his Neighbour), and the poor
lad was always afraid he should be dropped down upon to "say it." Mr.
Ashman's book is a little bewildering to an outsider who fails to
distinguish the _two_ vital forces. He says: "It is much rarer to find a
high development of a temperament in which the psychical element
prevails, than in which it is well blended with the vital-magnetic, or
than in which the latter excels. In nearly all popular public men there
is a blending of the two. We see it well exemplified in John Bright,
Spurgeon, and others. This is the secret of their drawing, magnetic
power. It is the secret, too, of many a physician's success: his genial
magnetism cures when his medicine is useless, although, of course, he