vinced
me of the truth of the supposition.

It happened that at the very time when my mind was dwelling upon this
subject, I saw a notice in the paper that our town was to be visited by
Dr. Messinger, the well-known medium and mesmerist. Messinger was a man
whose performance, such as it was, had been again and again pronounced
to be genuine by competent judges. He was far above trickery, and had
the reputation of being the soundest living authority upon the strange
pseudo-sciences of animal magnetism and electro-biology. Determined,
therefore, to see what the human will could do, even against all the
disadvantages of glaring footlights and a public platform, I took a
ticket for the first night of the performance, and went with several
student friends.

We had secured one of the side boxes, and did not arrive until after the
performance had begun. I had hardly taken my seat before I recognised
Barrington Cowles, with his fiancee and old Mrs. Merton, sitting in the
third or fourth row of the stalls. They caught sight of me at almost
the same moment, and we bowed to each other. The first portion of the
lecture was somewhat commonplace, the lecturer giving tricks of pure
legerdemain, with one or two manifestations of mesmerism, performed
upon a subject whom he had brought with him. He gave us an exhibition of
clairvoyance too, throwing his subject into a trance, and then demanding
particulars as to the movements of absent friends, and the whereabouts
of hidden objects all of which appeared to be answered satisfactorily.
I had seen all this before, however. What I wanted to see now was the
effect of the lecturer's will when exerted upon some independent member
of the audience.

He came round to that as the concluding exhibition in his performance.
"I have shown you," he said, "that a mesmerised subject is entirely
dominated by the will of the mesmeriser. He loses all power of
volition, and his very thoughts are such as are suggested to him by
the master-mind. The same end may be attained without any preliminary
process. A strong will can, simply by virtue of its strength, take
possession of a weaker one, even at a distance, and can regulate the
impulses and the actions of the owner of it. If there was one man in
the world who had a very much more highly-developed will than any of the
rest of the human family, there is no reason why he should not be
able to rule over them all, and to reduce his fellow-creatures to the
con