compared with the hidden
papers and found to be correct. The numbers engraved on people's watches
are also read in the same way.

I have never attended such performances because they had nothing to
teach me; and if confederates were used, all I can say is that the
performances could be given much more easily without confederates. My
reason for mentioning these people is that their work, if genuine, as I
suppose, allows me a greater brevity in this paper; also because their
large numbers prove the truth of what I published long ago, that anyone
of fairly strong will-power can perform these seeming marvels if a
suitable patient can be procured. It may, however, be accepted as
absolutely correct that the vision of mesmerized patients is not impeded
by materials. In my earliest experiments I tried all kinds of
receptacles when secreting articles. But the changes made no difference.
The patients can discern the interior of an iron box as easily as we in
the ordinary state can see through a glass one. Of course this has
nothing to do with ordinary vision, the eyelids being closed at the
time. All such trials as this I ranked in the lowest grade, because the
patients may have been reading what was within my own knowledge--a
faculty that was partly exhibited to prominent men in chief cities by
Mr. Stuart Cumberland and Mr. Irving Bishop.

This classifying of my experiments is only to bring on their mention in
the order in which they seem to increase in importance. As a fact, the
same faculties attend to them all. Still, the division is useful.
Second, then, come those which dealt with long distances. To one of my
first patients (a messenger in a law-office) I showed scenes in Syria,
Egypt, Athens, and Rome, and after I had removed him from the mesmeric
sleep I handed him a pile of photographs which I had brought from
foreign countries. He turned them over rapidly and picked out the
picture of the scene he had witnessed, and without hesitation. I ranked
all this class next to lowest in importance because I had the scenes in
my own mind at the time. Yet the patients saw more than I was thinking
of. When I showed this messenger the obelisk in front of St. Peter's at
Rome, he also described the great colonnade around the piazza, which I
had at the moment forgotten. Subsequent experiments with others made me
know that he was viewing the scene itself.

The class ranked third, or next higher, were those in which the patients
were c