Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-12-22
The Autobiography of Mark Twain
Continued from page s

day when Grant was getting we'll enough to
be on his feet and sit around in the psr1or and
talk the conversation fell upon Virginia and
| old times. ] was present; but the group were
probably quite unconscious OF me- beng
only lad and negligible quantity. Two of
the eroup-Dr. Peake and Mrs. Crawford,
Mrs. Grant mother-had been of the audi
ence when the Richmond theater burned
| down, thirty-six years before, and they talked
over the frightful details OF that memorable
| their eyes l saw it all with an intolerable
vividness; l saw the black smoke rolling and
| tumbling toward the sky, | saw the flames
| burst through it and turn red | heard the
shrieks OF the despairing, l gllmPsed Their ,
/ faces at the windows, caught htfully through
the yelling smoke, | saw them Jump to their
death, or to mutilaton worse than death. The
| picture is before me yet, and can never Jade
In due course they talked of the colonial
| mansion of the Peakes with its stately col
umns and its spacious grounds, and by odds
and ends l picked up clearly defined idea
| of the place | was strongly interested; for
| | had not before heard of such palatial things
| from the lips of people who had seen them
| with their own eyes. One detail, casually
| dropped, hit my imagination hard. In the
! wall, by the great front door, there was
| round hole as big as a saucer-a British cannon
| ball had made it, in the war OF the Revolution
| 1t was breath taking: it made history real;
history had never been real to me before
King IN the Fast
livery WELL three or four years later, as
already mentioned, | was king bee and
sole subject" in the mesmeric show. 1t was
the beginning Of the second week. the per
| Torrance was half over just then the MIA Jestic
DR.. Peake, with his ruffled bosom and wrist
bands and his gold headed cane, entered and
a deferential citizen vacated his seat beside
| the Grants and made the great chief take it.
| This happened while l was trying to invent
something fresh in the way of vision. in
response to the professor remark
| Concentrate your powers Look-look at
tentivelyi Therel Don't you see something!
oncentrate-concentratel Now, thenl De-
scribe it!
Without suspecting it, DR.. Peake, by enter
ing the place, had reminded me OF the talk OF
three years before. He had also furnished
me capital and was becoming my confederate,
an accompce in my frauds. | began on
vision, a vague and dim one (that was part
of the game at the beginning OF vision; it
look as if you had come loaded with it). The
| vision developed by degrees, and gathered
swing, momentum, energy. 1t was the Rich
mond fire DR.. Peake was cold at first. and
| his fine face had trace of polite scorn in it;
but when he began to recognize that fire that
expression changed, and his eyes began to
| light up As soon as | saw that, threw the
valves wide open and turned on all the steam,
| and gave those people supper OF fire and
horrors that was calculated to last them one
through-they were petrified. DR.. Peake had
risen and was standing and breathing hard
He said, in great voice:
MY doubts are ended. No COLLISION could
produce that miracle. 1t was totally impos-
sible for him to know those details; yet he has
described them with the clarity of an eye wit
ness, and with what unassailable truthfulness
God knows | know!
| saved the colonial mansion for the last
night, and solidifed and perpetuated Dr.
Peakes conversion with the cannon ball hole.
He explained to the house that l could never
have heard of that small detail, which differ
entiated this mansion from all other Virginian
mansions and perfectly identified it; there
fore the facts stood proven that l had seen
it in nv vision. Lawks!
1t is curious When the magcians en-
gagement closed there was but one person in
the village who did not believe in mesmerism,
and was the one. All the others were con-
verted; but | was to remain an implacable
and unpersuadable disbeliever in mesmerism
and hypnotism for close upon fifty years.
This was because never would examine them,
in after life. l couldn't. The subject
VOTED me. Perhaps because it brought back
to me passage in my life which for pride's
sake | wished to forget; though | thought
or persuaded myself thought should never
come across a 'proof" which wasn't thin and
cheap, and probably had fraud like me be-