more wonderful things,
when I was a girl; but he had the honesty to call it by its right
name--conjuring."

I had not time to carry on the discussion, for the Professor now
reappeared and informed us that by far the most interesting part of the
performance was still to come. Thought Reading and Mesmerism, or, as
some people preferred to call it--Hypnotism--were, he believed,
different parts of the same wonderful and but very partially-understood
power. A power so little understood as not even to possess a distinctive
name; a power which he believed to be latent in everybody, but which
was capable of being brought to more or less perfection, according to
the amount of care and attention bestowed upon it. "I," said the
Professor, "have given my life to it." And again I fancied I saw the
curious blue eyes flash with a sudden unexpected fire.

"In the experiments which I am about to show you," he went on, "I am
assisted by my daughter, Anna Sclamowsky," and, drawing back a curtain
at the back of the stage, he led forward a girl who looked to be between
sixteen and eighteen years old.

There was no sort of family resemblance between father and daughter. She
was tall and slight, with a small dark head prettily poised on a long,
slender neck. Her face was pale, and her large dark eyes had a startled,
frightened look as she gazed at the sea of strange faces below her. Her
father placed her in a chair facing us all; and turning once more to the
audience said:

"I shall now, with your kind permission, put my daughter into a mesmeric
or hypnotic trance; and while she is in it, I hope to show you some
particularly interesting experiments. Look at me, Anna--so--"

He placed his fingers for a moment on her eyelids, and then stood aside.
Except that the girl was now perfectly motionless, and that her gaze was
unnaturally fixed, I could see nothing different in her appearance from
what it had been a few moments before.

The Professor now turned to Mr. Danby, who was seated beside me, and
said, "If this gentleman will oblige me by stepping up on the stage, he
can assure himself by any means he may choose to use, that my daughter
is in a perfectly unconscious state at this moment; and if it will give
the audience and himself any more confidence in the sincerity of this
experiment, he is perfectly at liberty to blindfold her. Then if he will
be kind enough to go through the room and touch here and there any
person he may fancy, my