y handkerchief
in the wrong hands, otherwise nobody would have seen me!" She
recovered entirely from this curious attack of hallucination, and I
met her in society afterwards, perfectly restored to her senses.

On one occasion I allowed myself to be persuaded into testing my own
powers of mesmerizing, by throwing a young friend into a magnetic
sleep. I succeeded with considerable difficulty, and the next day
experienced great nervous exhaustion, which, I think, was the
consequence of her having, as she assured me she had, resisted with
the utmost effort of her will my endeavor to put her to sleep. As I
disapproved, however, of all such experiments, this is the only one
I ever tried.

My belief in the reality of the influence was a good deal derived
from my own experience, which was that of an invariable tendency to
sleep in the proximity of certain persons of whom I was particularly
fond. I used to sit at Mrs. Harry Siddons's feet, and she had hardly
laid her hand upon my head before it fell upon her knees, and I was
in a profound slumber. My friend Miss ----'s neighborhood had the
same effect upon me, and when we were not engaged in furious
discussion, I was very apt to be fast asleep whenever I was near
her. E---- S---- relieved me of an intense toothache once by putting
me to sleep with a few mesmeric passes, and I have, moreover, more
than once, immediately after violent nervous excitement, been so
overcome with drowsiness as to be unable to move. I remember a most
ludicrous instance of this occurring to me in the church of
Stratford-upon-Avon, when, standing before Shakespeare's tomb, and
looking intensely at his monument, I became so overpowered with
sleep that I could hardly rouse myself enough to leave the church,
and I begged very hard to be allowed to sleep out my sleep, then and
there, upon the stones under which he lay.

After extreme distress of mind, I have sometimes slept a whole day
and night without waking; and once, when overcome with anguish,
slept, with hardly an hour's interval at a time, the greater part of
a week. The drowsiness inspired in me by some of my friends I
attribute entirely to physical sympathy; others, of whom I was
nearly as fond, never affected me in this manner in the slightest
degree. I have often congratulated myself upon the fact that