torist
is recharged with electricity at so much per unit. Examinations will
then become matters of capacity in the real meaning of that word, and
we shall be tempted to invest our pocket-money by advertisements of "A
cheap line in Astrology," "Try our double-strength, two-minute course
of Classics," "This is remnant day for Trigonometry and Metaphysics,"
and so on.

My friend did not get as far as that. With him the process did not
take more than a minute, but it was startling in its results, and
reduced me to an extraordinary state of hypnotic receptibility. When
it was over my instructor tapped with a finger on my lips, uttering
aloud as he did so the words--

"Know none; know some; know little; know morel" again and again; and
the strangest part of it is that as he spoke I did know at first a
little, then more, and still more, by swift accumulation, of his speech
and meaning. In fact, when presently he suddenly laid a hand over my
eyes and then let go of my head with a pleasantly put question as to
how I felt, I had no difficulty whatever in answering him in his own
tongue, and rose from the ground as one gets from a hair-dresser's
chair, with a vague idea of looking round for my hat and offering him
his fee.

"My word, sir!" I said, in lisping Martian, as I pulled down my cuffs
and put my cravat straight, "that was a quick process. I once heard of
a man who learnt a language in the moments he gave each day to having
his boots blacked; but this beats all. I trust I was a docile pupil?"

"Oh, fairly, sir," answered the soft, musical voice of the strange
being by me; "but your head is thick and your brain tough. I could
have taught another in half the time."

"Curiously enough," was my response, "those are almost the very words
with which my dear old tutor dismissed me the morning I left college.
Never mind, the thing is done. Shall I pay you anything?"

"I do not understand."

"Any honorarium, then? Some people understand one word and not the
other." But the boy only shook his head in answer.

Strangely enough, I was not greatly surprised all this time either at
the novelty of my whereabouts or at the hypnotic instruction in a new
language just received. Perhaps it was because my head still spun too
giddily with that flight in the old rug for much thought; perhaps
because I did not yet fully realise the thing that had happened. But,
anyhow, there is the fact, which, like so many others in my narra