of hers, and a strong believer in
Perkinism, was very anxious to try the effects of tractoration upon
this unfortunate blemish. The patient consented; the lady "produced the
instruments, and, after drawing them four or five times over the spot,
declared that it changed to a paler color, and on repeating the use of
them a few minutes longer, that it had almost vanished, and was scarcely
visible, and departed in high triumph at her success." The lady who
underwent the operation assured the narrator "that she looked in the
glass immediately after, and that not the least visible alteration had
taken place."

It would be a very interesting question, what was the intellectual
character of those persons most conspicuous in behalf of the Perkinistic
delusion? Such an inquiry might bring to light some principles which
we could hereafter apply to the study of other popular errors. But the
obscurity into which nearly all these enthusiasts have subsided renders
the question easier to ask than to answer. I believe it would have
been found that most of these persons were of ardent temperament and
of considerable imagination, and that their history would show
that Perkinism was not the first nor the last hobby-horse they rode
furiously. Many of them may very probably have been persons of more than
common talent, of active and ingenious minds, of versatile powers and
various acquirements. Such, for instance, was the estimable man to whom
I have repeatedly referred as a warm defender of tractoration, and
a bitter assailant of its enemies. The story tells itself in the
biographical preface to his poem. He went to London with the view
of introducing a hydraulic machine, which he and his Vermont friends
regarded as a very important invention. He found, however, that the
machine was already in common use in that metropolis. A brother Yankee,
then in London, had started the project of a mill, which was to be
carried by the water of the Thames. He was sanguine enough to purchase
one fifth of this concern, which also proved a failure. At about the
same period he wrote the work which proved the great excitement of his
mind upon the subject of the transient folly then before the public.
Originally a lawyer, he was in succession a mechanician, a poet, and an
editor, meeting with far less success in each of these departments
than usually attends men of less varied gifts, but of more tranquil and
phlegmatic composition. But who is ignorant that the