“‘Believe me, my excellent young friend, that Mesmerism is a fine thing for inducing a “superior condition,” enabling one to write books which send their readers to suicides’ graves; to discover the art of marrying other people’s spouses; for procuring “Air-line” dispatches, and filling lunatic asylums with poor reason-bereft creatures; for stultifying a man’s conscience, and for emboldening one to pass for a philosopher when one is but an ass!’ and Ravalette smiled gravely. ‘Distrust all mesmeric railways,’ said he, ‘for many of the passengers, like Andrew Jackson Davis, after riding on that train for many years, have landed either in the swamps and mires of fantasy, or on the sides of moonshine mountains, called “Mornia,” and “Hornia,” “Forlornia,” and “Starnos,” and “Sternas,” and “Cor,” and “Hor,” and “Bore,” “Gupturion,” and “Spewrion,” and forty thousand more!’ “I bit my lip with vexation; for I had devoutly believed in and loved the subject and its advocates. I had always loved Davis, and highly admired his philosophy and writings, especially since a great free convention he once held in Central New York. I was aware that he had foes--people who refused to believe that God had appointed him his mouthpiece; who pointed to the graveyard in Quincey, Massachusetts, where lie the bodies of John and Hannah Grieves, surmounted by a stone that tells that these poor suicides came there, lost, ruined, from reading his books. I was well aware that there were painful rumors concerning a couple of divorces, and that some friends of mine had cut their throats in order to all the quicker reach the ‘Summer-land’ which he so elegantly described; but still I loved--still love him dearly. But now, when Ravalette suggested that he was a humbug, it struck me that Ravalette was right; for I suddenly recollected that once the great clairvoyant lost a little dog named ‘Dick,’ which his seership could not trace. I remembered that nineteen-twentieths of his prophecies from the ‘superior condition’ never came to pass, while the twentieth any school-boy could guess at. I recalled the fact that his philosophy was most decidedly medical--highly emetic, and very cathartic--and that his followers soon lost what little common-sense they formerly had, else it were impossible for them to accept the teachings of one who constantly contradicted himself. Still, I respected and loved him dearly, albeit Ravalette had utterly demolished his pretensions; and I saw clearly that, in believing the stuff he wrote and talked, I was like one who reads ‘Jack the Giant-killer,’ or ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ or ‘Baron Munchaussen,’ and believes the stories real and true.” CHAPTER II. SOMETHING CURIOUS.