ed to regard the
imposition of this need on a man rather as a curse laid upon him than as
a privilege and a pleasure. But I must not enlarge upon this further than
to observe that this portion of his "Life" which I was approaching
coincided in point of time with that period of my own life at which I had
been confronted with the alternative of starving for Art's sake or
becoming rich by supplying a clamorous trade demand.

It came, this check I have spoken of, one night, as I was in the very
middle of a sentence; and though I have cudgelled my brains in seeking
how best I can describe it, I am reduced to the simple statement that it
was as arresting, as sharp, actual and impossible to resist, as if my
hand had been seized and pinned down in its passage across the paper. I
can even see again the fragment of the sentence I had written: "... _and
the mere contemplation of a betrayal so essential--_" Then came that
abrupt and remarkable stop. It was such an experience as I had formerly
known only in nightmare.

I sat there looking blankly and stupidly at my own hand. And not only was
my hand arrested, but my brain also had completely ceased to work. For
the life of me I could not recall the conclusion of the sentence I had
planned a moment before.

I looked at my hand, and looked again; and as I looked I remembered
something I had been reading only a few days before--a profoundly
unsettling description of an experiment in auto-suggestion. The
experiment had consisted of the placing of a hand upon a table, and the
laying upon it the conjuration that, the Will notwithstanding, it should
not move. And as I watched my own hand, pale on the paper in the pearly
light, I knew that, by some consent to the nullification of the Will that
did not proceed from, the Self I was accustomed to regard as my own, that
injunction was already placed upon it. My conscious and deliberate Will
was powerless. I could only sit there and wait until whatever inhibition
had arrested my writing hand should permit it to move forward again.

It must have been several minutes before such a tingling of the nerves as
announces that the blood is once more returning to a cramped member
warned me that I was about to be released. Warily I awaited my moment;
then I plucked my hand to myself again with a suddenness that caused a
little blot of ink to spurt from my fountain-pen on to the surface of the
paper. I drew a deep breath. I was free again. And with the