The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-28
SCIENCE NOT BENEFITED.
A Hypnotic Test That Was Brought to
 Naught by a Field Mouse.

7
 Naught by Field Mouse.
 "One of the queerest experiences of my whole career, and I've had lots of em," said a well-known theatrical ad- vance agent who was in town a few days ago, happened in the fall of 1896, when I was acting as business manager, press boomer, ticket taker and liar-in- ordinary for a hypnotist who was mak- ing a tour of the small towns in south ern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio
 "The professor was a pretty smooth old fakir, but his show was lacking in novelty, and we were trying desperate ly to think up some sensational feature when we encountered a chap named O'Brien who was q professional horse for mesnerists A horse is stage slang for a ready-nade subject, who submits to all sorts of tests, and this fellow sug- gested that we stir up little excite ment by burying him alive. Of course, the dodge is old now, but it was fresh then, and We started at once to put 1t into execution. We were at a busting town on the Ohio river al the time, and we announced that on such and such d day Professor - would throw q man into a trance, nail him up in a coffin and bury him eight feet deep, where he would remain for fortyeight hours The disinterment and opening of the casket at the opera house were events on which we depended to draw huge crowd The whole affair was dubbed the great East Indian hypnotic trance test and O'Brlen figured as a wealthy traveller who had consented to submit to the ordeal purely in the interest of science
 "Of course, there were any number of details that had to be arranged" con- tinued the agent, but the burial final ly came off according to programme. Long practice at what Is called the sleep test made it comparatively easy for O'Brien to lie quiet for a couple of days and danger from sutfocation was avoided by q three-inch wooden tube, which connected the coffin with the out CT air. Tho experiment created i'm mense excitement in the vicinity, and we easily persuaded a dozen notoriously hungry citizens to act as committed to watch the grave by shifts, and see that no food or stimulants were passed down the tube, and, needless to say, the whole town came out to keep them com- pany. Folks talked in awed whispers of the unconscious man lying down there in the cold, dark ground; a num- Der of prominent physicians certified to the genuineness of the trance. Every thing was pointing to a tremendous sue cess, when just at dusk on the first day a frightful mishap occurred.
 "A small field mouse darted suddenly out of the grass, made two or three be- wildered dashes, and fell headlong into the wooden air tube. At the next in- stant the most awful bood-freezing, in- human howl ever heard by mortal ears issued out of the bowels of the earth. Even to me who knew O'Brien was wide awake and in no peril whatever, the yell was deeply horrifyirg, while the effect upon others may possibly be in- agned, but never adequately described. V ical and all the while those hideous shriel1s kept pouring swiftly out of the tube.
 Well, to make a long story short, a shovel brigade was organized, and in less than ten minutes O'Brien was reached and hauled out. He was then in a state of limp collapse, but he had strength enough to denounce the test as a fake and declared tbat we had in veigled him into it by taking advantage of his poverty. When he got that far along the professor and I quietly slipped away and left town unostentiously on q freight The crowd was certainly in lynching temper, What happened to OBrien was merely a breakdown of nerve. He was wrought up to high