es, and with their eyes I saw it all with
an intolerable vividness: I saw the black smoke rolling and tumbling
toward the sky, I saw the flames burst through it and turn red, I heard
the shrieks of the despairing, I glimpsed their faces at the windows,
caught fitfully through the veiling smoke, I saw them jump to their
death, or to mutilation worse than death. The picture is before me yet,
and can never fade.

In due course they talked of the colonial mansion of the Peakes, with
its stately columns and its spacious grounds, and by odds and ends I
picked up a clearly defined idea of the place. I was strongly
interested, for I had not before heard of such palatial things from the
lips of people who had seen them with their own eyes. One detail,
casually dropped, hit my imagination hard. In the wall, by the great
front door, there was a round hole as big as a saucer--a British
cannon-ball had made it, in the war of the Revolution. It was
breath-taking; it made history real; history had never been real to me
before.

Very well, three or four years later, as already mentioned, I was
king-bee and sole "subject" in the mesmeric show; it was the beginning
of the second week; the performance was half over; just then the
majestic Dr. Peake, with his ruffled bosom and wristbands and his
gold-headed cane, entered, and a deferential citizen vacated his seat
beside the Grants and made the great chief take it. This happened while
I was trying to invent something fresh in the way of a vision, in
response to the professor's remark--

"Concentrate your powers. Look--look attentively. There--don't you see
something? Concentrate--concentrate. Now then--describe it."

Without suspecting it, Dr. Peake, by entering the place, had reminded me
of the talk of three years before. He had also furnished me capital and
was become my confederate, an accomplice in my frauds. I began on a
vision, a vague and dim one (that was part of the game at the beginning
of a vision; it isn't best to see it too clearly at first, it might look
as if you had come loaded with it). The vision developed, by degrees,
and gathered swing, momentum, energy. It was the Richmond fire. Dr.
Peake was cold, at first, and his fine face had a trace of polite scorn
in it; but when he began to recognize that fire, that expression
changed, and his eyes began to light up. As soon as I saw that, I threw
the valves wide open and turned on all the steam, and gave those people
a sup