uch a mingled horror, disgust, and indignation,
that, when my neighbor appeared about to succumb to the influence
operating upon him, my whole nature was roused to such a state of
active opposition to the process I was witnessing that I determined,
if there was power in human will to make itself felt by mere silent
concentrated effort of purpose, I would prevent Dr. Lewis from
accomplishing his end; and it seemed to me, as I looked at him, as
if my whole being had become absorbed in my determination to defeat
his endeavor to set Dr. Becker to sleep. The nervous tension I
experienced is hardly to be described, and I firmly believe that I
accomplished my purpose. I was too much exhausted, after we left the
table, to speak, and too disagreeably affected by the whole scene to
wish to do so.

The next day I told Mr. Combe of my counter-magnetizing, or rather
neutralizing, experiment, by which he was greatly amused; but I do
not think he cared to enter upon any investigation of the subject,
feeling little interested in it, and having been rather surprised
into this exhibition of it by Mrs. Crow's bringing Dr. Lewis to his
house. That lady being undoubtedly an admirable subject for all such
experiments, having what my dear Mr. Combe qualified as "a most
preposterous organ of wonder," for which, poor woman, I suppose she
paid the penalty in a terrible nervous seizure, a fit of temporary
insanity, during which she imagined that she received a visit from
the Virgin Mary and our Saviour, both of whom commanded her to go
without any clothes on into the streets of Edinburgh, and walk a
certain distance in that condition, in reward for which the sins and
sufferings of the whole world would be immediately alleviated. Upon
her demurring to fulfil this mandate, she received the further
assurance that if she took her card-case in her right hand and her
pocket-handkerchief in her left, her condition of nudity would be
entirely unobserved by any one she met. Under the influence of her
diseased fancy, Mrs. Crow accordingly went forth, with nothing on
but a pair of boots, and being immediately rescued from the terrible
condition of mad exposure, in which she had already made a few paces
in the street where she lived, and carried back into her house, she
exclaimed, "Oh, I must have taken my card-case and m