THE HYPNOTIST
by Ambrose Bierce
By those of my friends who happen to know that
I sometimes amuse myself with hypnotism, mind
reading and kindred phenomena, I am frequently
asked if I have a clear conception of the nature
of whatever principle underlies them. To this
question I always reply that I neither have
nor desire to have. I am no investigator with
an ear at the key-hole of Nature's workshop,
trying with vulgar curiosity to steal the
secrets of her trade. The interests of science
are as little to me as mine seem to have been
to science.
Doubtless the phenomena in question are simple
enough, and in no way transcend our powers of
comprehension if only we could find the clew;
but for my part I prefer not to find it, for
I am of a singularly romantic disposition,
deriving more gratification from mystery than
from knowledge. It was commonly remarked of
me when I was a child that my big blue eyes
appeared to have been made rather to look
into than look out of--such was their dreamful
beauty, and in my frequent periods of abstraction,
their indifference to what was going on. In
those peculiarities they resembled, I venture
to think, the soul which lies behind them,
always more intent upon some lovely conception
which it has created in its own image than
concerned about the laws of nature and the
material frame of things. All this, irrelevant
and egotistic as it may seem, is related by
way of accounting for the meagreness of the
light that I am able to throw upon a subject
that has engaged so much of my attention,
and concerning which there is so keen and
general a curiosity. With my powers and
opportunities, another person might doubtless
have an explanation for much of what I
present simply as narrative.
My first knowledge that I possessed unusual
powers came to me in my fourteenth year, when
at school. Happening one day to have forgotten
to bring my noon-day luncheon, I gazed longingly
at that of a small girl who was preparing to
eat hers. Looking up, her eyes met mine and she
seemed unable to withdraw them. After a moment
of hesitancy she came forward in an absent kind
of way and without a word surrendered her little
basket with its tempting contents and walked
away. Inexpressibly pleased, I relieved my
hunger and destroyed the basket. After that
I had not the trouble to bring a luncheon for
myself: that little girl was my daily purveyor;
and not infrequently in satisfying my simple
need from her frugal store I combined pleasure
and profit by constraining her attendance at
the feast and making misleading proffer of the
viands, which eventually I consumed to the last
fragment. The girl was always persuaded that
she had eaten all herself; and later in the
day her tearful complaints of hunger surprised
the teacher, entertained the pupils, earned
for her the sobriquet of Greedy-Gut and filled
me with a peace past understanding.
A disagreeable feature of this otherwise
satisfactory condition of things was the
necessary secrecy: the transfer of the
luncheon, for example, had to be made at
some distance from the madding crowd, in
a wood; and I blush to think of the many
other unworthy subterfuges entailed by the
situation. As I was (and am) naturally of
a frank and open disposition, these became
more and more irksome, and but for the
reluctance of my parents to renounce the
obvious advantages of the new regime I
would gladly have reverted to the old.
The plan that I finally adopted to free
myself from the consequences of my own
powers excited a wide and keen interest
at the time, and that part of it which
consisted in the death of the girl was
severely condemned, but it is hardly
pertinent to the scope of this narrative.
For some years afterward I had little
opportunity to practice hypnotism; such
small essays as I made at it were commonly
barren of other recognition than solitary
confinement on a bread-and-water diet;
sometimes, indeed, they elicited nothing
better than the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was
when I was about to leave the scene of these
small disappointments that my one really
important feat was performed.
I had been called into the warden's office
and given a suit of civilian's clothing, a
trifling sum of money and a great deal of
advice, which I am bound to confess was of
a much better quality than the clothing. As
I was passing out of the gate into the light
of freedom I suddenly turned and looking the
warden gravely in the eye, soon had him
in control.
"You are an ostrich," I said.
At the post-mortem examination the stomach
was found to contain a great quantity of
indigestible articles mostly of wood or metal.
Stuck fast in the oesophagus and constituting,
according to the Coroner's jury, the immediate
cause of death, one door-knob.
I was by nature a good and affectionate son,
but as I took my way into the great world
from which I had been so long secluded I could
not help remembering that all my misfortunes
had flowed like a stream from the niggard
economy of my parents in the matter of school
luncheons; and I knew of no reason to think
they had reformed.
On the road between Succotash Hill and South
Asphyxia is a little open field which once
contained a shanty known as Pete Gilstrap's
Place, where that gentleman used to murder
travelers for a living. The death of Mr.
Gilstrap and the diversion of nearly all the
travel to another road occurred so nearly at
the same time that no one has ever been able
to say which was cause and which effect.
Anyhow, the field was now a desolation and
the Place had long been burned. It was while
going afoot to South Asphyxia, the home of
my childhood, that I found both my parents
on their way to the Hill. They had hitched
their team and were eating luncheon under
an oak tree in the center of the field. The
sight of the luncheon called up painful
memories of my school days and roused the
sleeping lion in my breast. Approaching the
guilty couple, who at once recognized me,
I ventured to suggest that I share their
hospitality.
"Of this cheer, my son," said the author of
my being, with characteristic pomposity,
which age had not withered, "there is
sufficient for but two. I am not, I hope,
insensible to the hunger-light in your eyes,
but--"
My father has never completed that sentence;
what he mistook for hunger-light was simply
the earnest gaze of the hypnotist. In a few
seconds he was at my service. A few more
sufficed for the lady, and the dictates of
a just resentment could be carried into effect.
"My former father," I said, "I presume that
it is known to you that you and this lady
are no longer what you were?"
"I have observed a certain subtle change,"
was the rather dubious reply of the old
gentleman; "it is perhaps attributable to
age."
"It is more than that," I explained; "it
goes to character--to species. You and the
lady here are, in truth, two broncos--wild
stallions both, and unfriendly."
"Why, John," exclaimed my dear mother, "you
don't mean to say that I am--"
"Madam," I replied, solemnly, fixing my eyes
again upon hers, "you are."
Scarcely had the words fallen from my lips
when she dropped upon her hands and knees,
and backing up to the old man squealed like
a demon and delivered a vicious kick upon
his shin! An instant later he was himself
down on all-fours, headed away from her and
flinging his feet at her simultaneously and
successively. With equal earnestness but
inferior agility, because of her hampering
body-gear, she plied her own. Their flying
legs crossed and mingled in the most bewildering
way; their feet sometimes meeting squarely
in midair, their bodies thrust forward,
falling flat upon the ground and for a moment
helpless. On recovering themselves they would
resume the combat, uttering their frenzy in
the nameless sounds of the furious brutes
which they believed themselves to be--the
whole region rang with their clamor! Round
and round they wheeled, the blows of their
feet falling "like lightnings from the
mountain cloud." They plunged and reared
backward upon their knees, struck savagely
at each other with awkward descending blows
of both fists at once, and dropped again
upon their hands as if unable to maintain
the upright position of the body. Grass and
pebbles were torn from the soil by hands and
feet; clothing, hair, faces inexpressibly
defiled with dust and blood. Wild, inarticulate
screams of rage attested the delivery of the
blows; groans, grunts and gasps their receipt.
Nothing more truly military was ever seen
at Gettysburg or Waterloo: the valor of my
dear parents in the hour of danger can never
cease to be to me a source of pride and
gratification. At the end of it all two
battered, tattered, bloody and fragmentary
vestiges of mortality attested the solemn
fact that the author of the strife was an
orphan.
Arrested for provoking a breach of the peace,
I was, and have ever since been, tried in
the Court of Technicalities and Continuances
whence, after fifteen years of proceedings,
my attorney is moving heaven and earth to
get the case taken to the Court of Remandment
for New Trials.
Such are a few of my principal experiments
in the mysterious force or agency known as
hypnotic suggestion. Whether or not it could
be employed by a bad man for an unworthy
purpose I am unable to say.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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