patients of those institutions. I am quite satisfied
that if I am allowed a fair opportunity of trying the effect of my
healing touch, ten out of every hundred of the inmates of these
asylums will receive their sight, or regain their speech and hearing.
I ask for no payment: I simply request that in these institutions
which are maintained by the public charity for the relief of helpless
sufferers, and where, therefore, there can be no collusion or any
suspicion of trickery or fraud, I should be allowed to lay my hands
upon the eyes or the ears of the inmates. I can do them no harm; and I
am perfectly sure that in at least ten per cent of the cases I shall
be able to give great if not entire relief."

"This is all very well; but before you can expect the governors of
public institutions to allow you to touch their inmates there must be
a preliminary illustration of your power. Otherwise they would say
justly that they would be over-run with quacks, all of whom might wish
to try a patent nostrum upon the unfortunate 'inmates of public
institutions.'"

"Very well," said Mr. Stephen, "I am willing to submit my gift to the
most stringent test which your scientific sceptics can suggest. I am
willing to give an exhibition of my power under any test, in the
presence of any picked number of sceptics whom you may nominate, and
you may bring there half a dozen cases of disease certified by the
faculty as incurable. Of course you will not bring sufferers whose
complaints are manifestly beyond my power to cure. As I said before, I
make no claim to restore organs that are destroyed, but there is a
sufficiently wide category in the complaints 'that flesh is heir to'
to afford you an ample choice of half a dozen typical incurable cases.
When the deaf, dumb, lame, and otherwise suffering persons whom you
wish experimented on have been brought and are in the presence of
those whom you shall name, I will undertake to effect an immediate
improvement in the condition of, say, four out of the six. It will
probably become a complete cure on the second or third visit. I seldom
or never see a patient more than thrice."

"Well, that seems fair. You have no objection to my publishing this
offer in the _Pall Mall Gazette_?"

"None. I make no profession to any skill. I can only exercise a power
which I discovered quite accidentally was vested in me. The limits of
that I can ascertain only by experience. I am perfectly willing to
have that pow