s getting boiled to death in my own bile.

On the fourth night temptation came, and I was not strong enough to
resist. When I had gazed at the disk awhile I pretended to be sleepy,
and began to nod. Straightway came the professor and made passes over my
head and down my body and legs and arms, finishing each pass with a snap
of his fingers in the air, to discharge the surplus electricity; then he
began to "draw" me with the disk, holding it in his fingers and telling
me I could not take my eyes off it, try as I might; so I rose slowly,
bent and gazing, and followed that disk all over the place, just as I
had seen the others do. Then I was put through the other paces. Upon
suggestion I fled from snakes; passed buckets at a fire; became excited
over hot steamboat-races; made love to imaginary girls and kissed them;
fished from the platform and landed mud-cats that outweighed me--and so
on, all the customary marvels. But not in the customary way. I was
cautious at first, and watchful, being afraid the professor would
discover that I was an impostor and drive me from the platform in
disgrace; but as soon as I realized that I was not in danger, I set
myself the task of terminating Hicks's usefulness as a subject, and of
usurping his place.

It was a sufficiently easy task. Hicks was born honest; I, without that
incumbrance--so some people said. Hicks saw what he saw, and reported
accordingly; I saw more than was visible, and added to it such details
as could help. Hicks had no imagination, I had a double supply. He was
born calm, I was born excited. No vision could start a rapture in him,
and he was constipated as to language, anyway; but if I saw a vision I
emptied the dictionary onto it and lost the remnant of my mind into the
bargain.

At the end of my first half-hour Hicks was a thing of the past, a fallen
hero, a broken idol, and I knew it and was glad, and said in my heart,
Success to crime! Hicks could never have been mesmerized to the point
where he could kiss an imaginary girl in public, or a real one either,
but I was competent. Whatever Hicks had failed in, I made it a point to
succeed in, let the cost be what it might, physically or morally. He
had shown several bad defects, and I had made a note of them. For
instance, if the magician asked, "What do you see?" and left him to
invent a vision for himself, Hicks was dumb and blind, he couldn't see a
thing nor say a word, whereas the magician soon found that when