ality and
public spirit which is constantly increasing her enormous prosperity.
Happy the city which possesses such citizens! Happy the citizens who
have a city so nobly deserving of their best services!

AN EVENING WITH THE TELEGRAPH-WIRES.

My cousin Moses has made the discovery that he is a powerful
magnetizer.

Like many others who have newly come into possession of a small tract
in those mysterious, outlying, unexplored wildernesses of Nature,
which we call by so many names, but which as yet refuse to be defined
or classed, he has been naturally eager to commence operations, and
_exploit_ and farm it a little. He is making experiments on a narrow
border of his wild lands. He is a man of will and of strong
_physique_, with an inquiring and scientific turn of mind, which
inclines him chiefly to metaphysical studies. It is not to be wondered
at, that, having lately discovered that he possesses the mesmeric
gift, he should not sufficiently discriminate as to its application.
Later he will see that it is an agent not to be tampered with, and
never to be used on healthy subjects, but applied only to invalids.
To-day he is like a newly-armed knight-errant, bounding off on his
steed at sunrise, in search of adventures.

One afternoon, not long since, he was telling me of his extraordinary
successes with somnambulists and _somnoparlists_,--of old ladies cured
of nervous headaches and face-twitches, and of young ones put to sleep
at a distance from the magnetizer, dropping into a trance suddenly as
a bird struck by a gun-shot, simply by an act of his volition,--of
water turned into wine, and wine into brandy, to the somnambulic
taste,--and so on, till we got wandering into crooked by-paths of
physics and metaphysics, that seemed to lead us nowhere in
particular,--when I said, "Come, Cousin Moses, suppose you try it on
me, by way of experiment. But I have my doubts if you'll ever put me
to sleep."

My cousin yielded to my request with alacrity;--every subject for
mesmerism was for him legitimate;--and I relinquished myself to his
passes with the docility of a man about to be shaved.

The passes from the head downward were kept up perseveringly for half
an hour, without my experiencing any change, or manifesting the least
symptom of drowsiness. At last the charm began to work. I began to be
conscious of a singular trickling or creeping sensation following the
motion of his passes down my arms. My respiration grew