Now this thing, when actually worked out under my very eyes and with myself doing the thinking, astounded me and caused me to ponder the mysteries of life more than ever. How could another man read my mind like that? What was it that perceived and interpreted my thoughts? It gave me an immense kick mentally, one that stays by me to this day, and set me off eventually on the matters of psychology and chemic mysteries generally. When this was written up as true, as it was, it made a splendid story and attracted a great deal of attention. Once and for all, it cleared up my thoughts as to the power of mind over so-called matter and caused this “committee” to enter upon experiments of its own with hypnotists, spiritualists and the like, until we were fairly well satisfied as to the import of these things. I myself stood on the stomach of a thin hypnotized boy of not more than seventeen years of age, while his head was placed on one chair, his feet on another and no brace of any kind was put under his body. Yet his stomach held me up. But, having established the truth of such things for ourselves, we found no method of doing anything with our knowledge. It was practically useless in this region, and decidedly taboo. Another individual who interested me quite as might a book or story was a Spiritualist, a fat, sluglike Irish type, who came to town about this time and proved to be immensely successful in getting up large meetings, entrance to which he charged. Soon there were ugly rumors as to the orgiastic character of his séances, especially at his home where he advertised to receive interested spiritualists in private. One day my noble and nosy city editor set me to the task of ferreting out all this, with the intention of _sicking_ the moralists on the gentleman and so driving him out of town. Was it because Mr. Wandell, interested in morals or at least responding to the local sentiment for a moral city, considered this man a real menace to St. Louis and so wished to be rid of him? Not at all. Mr. Wandell cared no more for Mr. Mooney or the public or its subsurface morals than he cared for the politics of Beluchistan. In the heart of St. Louis at this very time, in Chestnut Street, was a large district devoted to just such orgies as this stranger was supposed to be perpetrating; but this area was never in the public eye, and you could not, for your life, put it there. The public apparently did not want it attacked, or if it did there were forces sufficiently powerful to keep it from obtaining its wishes. The police were supposed to extract regular payments from one and all in this area, as Rodenberger, in the little paper he ran, frequently charged, but this paper had no weight. The most amazing social complications occasionally led directly to one or another of these houses, as I myself had seen, but no comment was ever made on the peculiarity of the area as a whole or its persistence in the face of so much moral sentiment. The vice