In this pleasant and delightful circle mesmerism attracted its full share of attention. I met it in almost every circle where I happened to be present. It seemed to take the place of cards, music, and dancing. One evening I was at a friend’s house, where were collected some twenty-five or thirty gentlemen and ladies, or perhaps I should say, ladies and gentlemen, mainly on my account, for I was, in a small way, something of a lion, and our people are great in lionizing whenever they have an opportunity, as Dickens, Kossuth, Padre Gavazzi, and others hardly less worthy can abundantly testify. Indeed, our people are democrats only from envy and spite. In their souls they are the most aristocratic people in the world, and would be so avowedly, only they have no legitimate aristocracy. Democracy has its origin in the feeling,—since I am as good as you, and since I cannot be an aristocrat, you shall be a democrat with me. In this private party there were two or three somnambulists, and twice that number of mesmerizers. My friend, Mr. Winslow, from Boston, was present, and also Mr. Cotton, who was in the city on some business pertaining to holding a world’s convention in London for evangelizing France, Italy, and other benighted countries of Europe. Mr. Winslow was in high spirits. He was sure that he was making out his proofs that there is a demonic element in human nature, never once reflecting, that if demonic it is not human. “I am,” said he, “on the point of rehabilitating history. Miracles, divinations, sorceries, magic, the black arts, which surprise us in all history, sacred and profane, and which are either denied outright, or ascribed to supernatural agencies, I think I shall be able to accept, as facts, as real phenomena, and explain on natural principles. I think I have in mesmerism an explanation of them all.” “So you imagine that with mesmerism you may take your place with the magicians of Egypt, and enter into a successful contest with Moses,” said Mr. Cotton. “You forget that those magicians were discomfited, and at the third trial were obliged to give up and acknowledge themselves beaten. ‘The finger of God is here.’” “Moses was a superior mesmerizer, and he mesmerized for a good, and they for a bad purpose, which makes all the difference in the world,” replied Mr. Winslow. “But these magicians, then, could exercise the mesmeric power up to a certain point, and for evil; I thought it was a doctrine of mesmerizers, that none but virtuous and honest men could mesmerize, and these only for a good and honest purpose,” said Mr. Cotton.