“‘India is the paradise of _charming_ snakes, and a commission was sent thither by the joint governments of England and France, to test this matter thoroughly. This commission settled upon Candeish, a province of the Decan, where serpents most abound, and the experiments were made simultaneously in the towns of Nunderbar, Sindwa, Dowlea, Chapra, Jamneer, Maligaum, Chundoor, Kurgoon, Chorwa, Bejagur, Hurdwa, Asseergurh, Hashungabad, and Boorhumpore; and they were made with thirty different species of serpents, on eleven hundred and fifty-three human subjects, of twenty-three different nations, and all sorts of temperaments. First, these persons were subjected--under proper precautions, of course--to the mesmeric glance of hungry, quiet, and enraged serpents. In all three cases the effects were bad, all the subjects alike complaining of constriction of the chest, loss of memory, and a very strange sort of vertigo. As soon as the last symptom manifested itself, the curtain that separated the serpents from the men was dropped, and proper baths and other restoratives resorted to. Secondly--these same persons were all invited subsequently to a feast, as a reward for their services. Serpents were securely fastened in wooden boxes beneath the seats of three hundred and sixteen of them, and of these two hundred and eighty-four manifested the same symptoms as when under the direct gaze of the serpents. Two months afterwards ninety-four of the same persons, unknown to themselves, were placed to work in an apartment built of the boards that had composed the serpent dens, and the effects, a third time, were absolutely identical! Now, in this light, what becomes of your spiritual hypothesis! It is gone to the four winds of earth. But to set the matter entirely at rest, and to give your spiritual notion respecting Mesmerism its eternal quietus, let me call your attention to the fact that if a man, any man, sits before a swinging disk of black glass, and fixes his eye upon it, he will eventually be as deeply magnetized and as lucidly clairvoyant, as he would under the operation of the most powerful magnetizer on the globe!’ “I felt that the tables were turned, and that the old gentleman held me at his mercy. However, he forbore to triumph, but went on, saying-- “‘I do not say that the soul of man is physical, but I know that his spirit is so; for I proved that over sixty years ago, to my complete and entire satisfaction. Do not, I beg you, consider me a Materialist, or that I dispute the existence of spirit. Far from that! Your humble servant is a firm believer, not only in spirit, but in a great Spiritual Kingdom, more vast, varied, and beautiful than this Material one; and believe me, _mon ami_, when I affirm that not more than one man in ten thousand has any adequate idea of what he means when pronouncing the word Spirit; not one man in thrice that number can properly define it.