, 1892-03-17

VI "a RCAoOh ~
cerned without their consent. which for
manifest reasons 1t would not be possible
TO obtain, and that he may not be bothered
by scientific cranks" and perhaps en-
trapped into giving a clew to the afflicted
family, he insists that his identity shall not
be made known, but he vouches for the
truth of every detail in this statement, and,
personally, / believe him. He says:
"Mr. x, as i shall designate the gen
tleman, holds a responsible n lucrative
position in a large financial institution
down town. His wife is a charming, re-
fined lady. They have a daughter seven
teen years old whom ! shall call Kate, for
the excellent reason that it is not her real
name. They have also other children. The
family live in their own house, a hand
some brownstone residence, within seven
minutes walk of Mount Morris park, and
are at least very well off II not actually
wealthy from an Aston or Gould point Of
view. Altogether, you sees they are very
respectable folks. have enjoyed their ac-
q%uaintance longer than Kate is old, but
until three months past they nave seldom
required my professional services. Now
1 have both mother and daughter on my
hands. The former. though suffering from
very great arrangement of the nervous
system, / shall probably bring around all
right II e~xcitant causes do not increase,
but Kate l am very anxious about.
"In July last the ladies of the family were
summering at a semfprivate hotel in the
Berkshire hills somewhere, a pleasant
enough place for mental stagnation no
doubt, or rather the sort of place where
people do fool things for lack of rational
amusement. One of the fool things they
did there was dabbling with hypnotism.
A young medical student from Boston
seems to have been responsible for it. OF
course he didn't mean any harm. Every
medical student has some fad or other for
awhile before he gets full sense. His
happened to be hypnotism and he was q
crank about 1t. All the fool girls about
the place were wild to be ~hypnotizcd, and
he just ran riot in experiment. The best
sensitive he found among them was my
friends daughter, Kate. From the very
start she went into the trance condition so
readily that it almost seemed like return
ing to a normal state, manifesting at once
clairvoyance, clairaudience, susceptibility
to thought transference and so on. Then,
as she was subjected TO the influence every
day. her natural constituencies was Guilt
waited and greatly enhanced. This had been
going on two or three week when an in
cident occurred which .occasioned some
alarm. The not infrequent and truly
dangerous phenomenon of cross magnet
ism presented itself. Kate ceased, while
in trance, to heir or obey him. Some
stronger will force and better controlled,
among the persons present. had seized
upon and dominated her helpless conscious
ness. The student recognized the peril
GUS condition, but becoming scared lost his
head and was powerless to meet the
emergency properly. His violent efforts to
regain control threw the unfortunate girl
into frightful commissions. The other girls
and women present were terrified, and the
influence Of nervous alarm they originated
unconsciously added to his bewildermsnt
and trepidation, and all reacted upon her.
There was only one other man present
than the student, and he volunteered his
assistance. AS the disturbing influence
came from him he readily demagnetized
the girl to the extent of returning her to
the students control, put that young man
vas by this time in such a state OF mind
that he could not properly restore her nor
NAL conditions, and it was a week or ten
days before she seemed to have recovered
from the grave shock her ervou system
had received. Meanwhile the student ned.
bag and baggage.
Kate was now literally at the mercy
of a fellow who proved himself a heart
less and conscienceless scoundrel, yet an
unusually strong. hypnotizer, and who,
through the circumstance narrated, was
fully informed of her abnormally devel-