the main party and was watching an open space in the
jungle when my attention was attracted by a pretty little tropical bird,
fluttering round and round a tree. This interested me, and on closer
inspection I found a huge snake had coiled himself on one of the upper
branches, and was calmly lying with its mouth open, waiting for his
prey. Smaller and smaller were the circles the bird made, and weaker and
weaker were its efforts to escape the fascination, until it finally
fluttered to a limb just above the snake. It seemed to turn its piteous
glance for help on me, but not I! I was enjoying it. At length it could
no longer resist its fate and it fluttered into its enemy's jaws. Now
other men would have let sentiment get the better of them and have shot
that snake; but I looked up to it with respect, and it set me thinking.
'What if I could bring people under my will like that!' I thought. 'No
girl would slight me any more.'

"Two days later, I left India for England. A sudden departure, but I was
on the eve of a great discovery. I gathered together all the treatises
relating to mesmerism that I could find and shut myself up in the
country to study them. By the time I had mastered them, I found I
thoroughly understood the art and, returning to London, I began to
practise on people whom I had engaged for the purpose. One evening I
accidentally made a great discovery. I found that by concentrating my
gaze at a certain angle on another I could control that person's will.
To my joy I found it answered with greater ease on women, and I started
experimenting right away. My first subject was Fanny at the 'Royal.' You
know the snubby little minx she was. She had tried to snub me more than
once in public, and I felt I owed her a grudge, so to her I went to pay
it.

"I found her alone in the bar, and calling for a whiskey and soda, she
served it out in her usual languid way that riled me. As she put out her
hand to take my half-crown I seized it and looked her in the face hard.
Her first impulse was to withdraw it in disgust, but gradually her face
began to relax, and in two minutes we were talking together like the
oldest friends."

"What did you will her to do?" asked Tommy, with interest.

"I willed her to think that she loved me. And I succeeded, for when her
_fiance_ came in, she gave me the preference of her company. I despised
and detested them both, so, to rile him, I boldly invited her to go with
me to the theatre that