MIND READING.

ONE morning, about the middle of the Spring term, Master Bilderback made his appearance at school with a subdued manner apparent in all his actions, while a cast of sadness mingled with traces of pleasant memories overspread his countenance. It was, in short, that general expression of penitence which people assume after a holiday of more than usual hilarity. His quiet manner astonished the scholars and alarmed his teacher, who feared that it was a portent of some unusual mischief, and kept her eye upon the lad in consequence. He did not appear to be conscious of the surveillance under which he was placed. He bent no pins, he chewed no gum, he fired at the adjacent scholars no projectiles of masticated paper during the morning; no dismal but subdued cat-calls were heard from the vicinity of his seat; no grotesque grimaces made his neighbors laugh with uncounterfeited glee; restful were his feet, and quiet the fingers which were wont to drum on the desk four minutes out of every five. Master Bilderback was either in some deep affliction or he was ill. There was something wrong about him.

It transpired, along toward noon, when Master Bilderback’s spirits began to rise a little, that he had indeed passed under the rod, with his father at the other end of it, during the evening previous. The waters of affliction had gone over his soul, and his back had gone under the sole of his mother’s slipper. It seems they had company at Mr. Bilderback’s that evening, quite a large party, in fact, and the conversation turned on mind reading. The discussion became very spirited, Mr. Bilderback being the leader of the party which avowed its belief in mesmeric influences. The usual arguments of learned length and thundering sound were hurled back and forth, Mr. Bilderback winning especial distinction by the clearness with which he proved that, in certain esthetic conditions of the mental and physical systems, the peculiar psychic forces which always existed in a latent state, were roused into an active condition; and the action of the intellect upon the cerebrum was felt in the cerebellum, and transmitted by mesmeric condition to the candelebra, where the psychomatic transfusion of the occipital parietis made the Ego as cognizant of the mutation and genuflexions of the non-Ego, as though the psychic modifications really impinged upon the same ganglion; and the nerve waves along the ganglia of the two systems, transmuted by a touch of the hand, were, and could only be, identical. And Mr. Bilderback’s party said, “Yes; what could you say to that, now?” And the other party shook their heads and said, “Yes; but that was only a theory, after all; they would like to see the hypothesis demonstrated.” And at that critical juncture, Master Bilderback, who had been an attentive listener, spoke up, in his rough, horrid style, and declared that “that wasn’t nauthin’;” that they tried it at school, an’ he could let the boys hide things and then lead them right to the place where they were hid. The excitement ran high for a few moments, and Master B. was closely catechised, but he never varied from his original story; and they finally determined to try him.

Mr. Tweesdle, a young fellow who dotes on poetry and Miss Bilderback, was the first subject. He announced that he was thinking of a certain object, and by the way he looked at the mind-reader’s sister, everybody thought they knew what it was. But Master Bilderback seized him by the hand, led him out in the hall and up to the hat-rack, followed by the entire company, and reaching his hand into Mr. Tweesdle’s overcoat pocket, drew forth a paper bag containing a pound of sausages, half a dozen eggs, and a couple of rusks, remarking, “There, that’s what you’re thinking of.” And just at that moment he certainly was, although he shook his head in an idiotic manner and laughed feebly, while all the rest of the people never smiled, but only looked at each other and said, “Why, how funny!”

This sad affair cast a gloom over the entire community for a few moments, but the people rallied and demanded another test. There was a general reluctance on the part of the visitors to take a hand in it, and so Mrs. Bilderback was prevailed upon to be a subject in the course of scientific experiments. As soon as she had assumed a pensive expression and announced that her mind was wholly occupied with one subject, to the exclusion of all other terrestrial things, the boy grasped her by the hand, and away they went, sailing up stairs, followed by the entire congregation. The mind-reader marshaled them into a room, and leading his subject straight to the bureau, drew from a small drawer a set of false teeth and a bottle of hair dye. Mrs. Bilderback shrieked, the company looked grave, and some of the ladies declared to each other that well now, they never did.

There was another brief season of gloom, which was dissipated by Mr. Bilderback declaring that as neither of the subjects in the two experiments they had just witnessed had denied the accuracy of the mind-reader’s judgment, he would submit to the test himself. Great applause greeted this determination, and as Mr. Bilderback, with a glance that threatened a massacre if there were any tricks played on him, placed his hand in that of his son, the congregation rose en masse to follow where the mind-reader might lead. Master Bilderback placed his hand against his father’s forehead for a moment; then he placed it against his own and remained for several seconds in a thoughtful posture, and then led his reluctant parent, followed by the company, out of doors, and calling for a lantern, which was provided, they went into the woodshed, where the mind-reader, despite several stealthy nudges from his parent, reached his arm behind a pile of hickory knots, and drew forth a whisky bottle nearly a foot long, flat as a board, and about half full. Then a shadow fell upon the community that not even the cordial good nights that were exchanged at the door could dissipate, and after the footsteps of the last reveler had died away in the distance, Master Bilderback held two separate private seances with his parents, the remarkable manifestations of which occasioned the subdued state of mind and unusual depression of spirits which were so painfully apparent in the young man the following day.