"In a certain village about twenty miles from B---- the local medical man met with a country labourer's daughter, of about sixteen, whose condition her parents bewailed with bitter tears. They said their daughter could neither be said to be ill nor well. She suffered from no pain or illness, she ate and drank, slept--often for a whole day at a time--and yet she seemed to be wasting away, and getting weaker and feebler daily, so that she had been able to do no work for a long time past. The doctor convinced himself that some deep-seated affection of the nervous system was the root of the evil, and that mesmerism was clearly indicated as the remedy. He told the parents that it was impossible that their daughter could be cured there in the village, but that she could be put to rights completely if they would send her to the hospital in B----, where she would have the best of advice and treatment, and be given the necessary medicine without having to pay a farthing. After a hard struggle the parents did as they were advised. "Before the mesmeric cure had been commenced I went with my friend to the hospital, and saw the patient. I found the girl in a lofty, well-lighted room, fitted up in the most careful manner with all imaginable comforts and conveniences. She was of very delicate build for her station in life, and her refined-looking face was almost to be called beautiful, had it not been for the dull, vacant eyes, the deadly pallor, the colourless lips. Probably her malady had impaired, for the time, her mental powers, but she seemed to be very limited in intelligence, appeared to have a good deal of difficulty in understanding questions put to her, and answered them in the broad, abominable, unintelligible jargon which the country people speak in her part of the world. The director had selected as her mesmerizer a young, robust medical student whose face expressed ingenuousness and kindliness, and to whom he had ascertained that the girl had no dislike. The process began. There was no question in this case of visits by the curious, astonishing feats, or the like. Besides the mesmerizer, no one was present except the director (who watched the process with the minutest attention, and carefully observed the most trifling incidents) and me. At first the girl seemed but very slightly susceptible, but ere long she progressed rapidly from grade to grade, until in three weeks' time she reached the stage of true clairvoyance. Let me pass over the various wonderful phenomena which presented themselves in her several stages. It is sufficient if I assure you that here, where there was no possibility whatever of the smallest deception, I was convinced to the depths of my soul of the real occurrence of that state which mesmerists describe as the highest form of clairvoyance. In this stage, as Kluge says, the union with the mesmerizer is so absolute and complete that the subject not only knows