mother a little of the rest she stood so much in need of, as the operator could by means of the magnetic passes, or even by merely laying her hand on the patient’s forehead, send her for hours into a deep sleep, from which she could not awake of her own accord. But the fact that the magnetiser had, as she boasted, herself brought fifteen children into the world, had not apparently imbued her with very tender feelings towards children in general, and the influence she was not slow in acquiring over her patient she so thoroughly abused in tyrannising over us, that we three cordially detested her, and were thankful when a too glaring usurpation of authority led to her summary dismissal. Her brief stay in our midst had, however, awakened among us all the desire to ascertain by similar experiments, what latent magnetic power might possibly reside in some of us, and it was very soon shown that my uncle, Nicholas of Nassau, was possessed of a quite exceptional degree of the mesmeric or hypnotic force, which he, a lively, thoughtless youth of twenty, did not scruple to use for all sorts of practical jokes. A favourite one was to prevent his sister’s governess from getting up out of her chair; do what she would, she was as if nailed down to it whenever he chose to forbid her to rise, and he would even sometimes mount his horse and ride away for a couple of hours, deaf to the entreaties and adjurations of his victim. Another time he ordered her to put out her tongue, in the midst of a ceremonious Court dinner, and almost crying with indignation, she was forced to obey. His sisters found it equally impossible to disobey whatever extravagant commands he might lay on them, such as forcing my mother to stand still holding out her hand whilst he threatened to aim a heavy blow at it with his riding-whip. Such displays of his extraordinary and inexplicable powers afforded great amusement to himself and others, above all to the child spectators, who laughed heartily to see their elders for once reduced to such submissiveness. It was therefore a sad disappointment to us when, in consequence of the fits of hysterics into which one or two ladies had been thrown by some of my uncle’s pranks, he was obliged to desist from them. We little ones had enjoyed them the more, that he never tried them on us, from whom it would indeed have been superfluous to exact obedience in this fashion, trained as we were to carry out unquestioningly and with military promptness and exactitude, whatever orders were given us. For this was in the old days, when it seemed to be a recognised thing, that children had come into the world just to do what they were told, and learn whatever was taught them! Nobody thought of asking them if they found it a tedious restraint to behave properly, nor were they consulted as to whether their lessons bored them. If in my youthful days, for instance, I played badly in my piano-lesson, it was