might
doubtless have an explanation for much of what I present simply as
narrative.

My first knowledge that I possessed unusual powers came to me in my
fourteenth year, when at school. Happening one day to have forgotten to
bring my noon-day luncheon, I gazed longingly at that of a small girl
who was preparing to eat hers. Looking up, her eyes met mine and she
seemed unable to withdraw them. After a moment of hesitancy she came
forward in an absent kind of way and without a word surrendered her
little basket with its tempting contents and walked away. Inexpressibly
pleased, I relieved my hunger and destroyed the basket. After that I had
not the trouble to bring a luncheon for myself: that little girl was my
daily purveyor; and not infrequently in satisfying my simple need from
her frugal store I combined pleasure and profit by constraining her
attendance at the feast and making misleading proffer of the viands,
which eventually I consumed to the last fragment. The girl was always
persuaded that she had eaten all herself; and later in the day her
tearful complaints of hunger surprised the teacher, entertained the
pupils, earned for her the sobriquet of Greedy-Gut and filled me with a
peace past understanding.

A disagreeable feature of this otherwise satisfactory condition of
things was the necessary secrecy: the transfer of the luncheon, for
example, had to be made at some distance from the madding crowd, in a
wood; and I blush to think of the many other unworthy subterfuges
entailed by the situation. As I was (and am) naturally of a frank and
open disposition, these became more and more irksome, and but for the
reluctance of my parents to renounce the obvious advantages of the new
_regime_ I would gladly have reverted to the old. The plan that I
finally adopted to free myself from the consequences of my own powers
excited a wide and keen interest at the time, and that part of it which
consisted in the death of the girl was severely condemned, but it is
hardly pertinent to the scope of this narrative.

For some years afterward I had little opportunity to practice hypnotism;
such small essays as I made at it were commonly barren of other
recognition than solitary confinement on a bread-and-water diet;
sometimes, indeed, they elicited nothing better than the
cat-o'-nine-tails. It was when I was about to leave the scene of these
small disappointments that my one really important feat was performed.

I had been calle