tirely plausible. It is the only safe
one that can be given, and it is confirmed by other manifestations
of hypnotic power that you would not believe if I should describe
them. Fakirs have hypnotized people I know and have made them
witness events and spectacles which they afterward learned were
transpiring, at the very moment, five and six thousand miles
away. For example, a young gentleman, relating his experience,
declared that under the power of one of these men he attended his
brother's wedding in a London church and wrote home an account
of it that was so accurate in its details that his family were
convinced that he had come all the way from India without letting
them know and had attended it secretly.

Many of the snake charmers to whom I referred in a previous chapter
are fakirs, devoted to gods whose specialties are snakes, and
pious Hindus believe that the deities they worship protect them
from the venom of the reptiles. Sometimes you can see one of
them at a temple deliberately permit his pets to sting him on
the arm, and he will show you the blood flowing. Taking a little
black stone from his pocket he will rub it over the wound and then
rub it upon the head of the snake. Then he will rub the wound
again, and again the head of the snake, all the time muttering
prayers, making passes with his hands, bowing his body to the
ground, and going through other forms of worship, and when he
has concluded he will assure you that the bite of the snake has
been made harmless by the incantation.

I have never seen more remarkable contortionists than the fakirs
who can be always found about temples in Benares, and frequently
elsewhere. They are usually very lean men, almost skeletons. As
they wear no clothing, one can count their bones through the
skin, but their muscles and sinews are remarkably strong and
supple. They twist themselves into the most extraordinary shapes.
No professional contortionist upon the vaudeville stage can compare
with these religious mendicants, who give exhibitions in the
open air, or in the porticos of the temples in honor of some
god and call it worship. They acquire the faculty of doing their
feats by long and tedious training under the instruction of older
fakirs, who are equally accomplished, and the performances are
actually considered worship, just as much as an organ voluntary,
the singing of a hymn, or a display of pulpit eloquence in one of
our churches. The more wonderful their f