Yet I could not help trying to argue, feebly enough, that the showing of dreadful acts would call forth feelings of horror, as we may judge from the murder of Desdemona, and that fitting words would arouse pity in us, as they do in the same play. But, smiling at the clumsiness of my example, he remarked that just there lay the error; for if we were truly to see a Moor, however splendid, plunging a knife into the body of a beautiful lady, our emotions, if we knew her to be guiltless, would be very different from those we feel in a theatre; and that, instead of sitting still, we should most certainly interpose, or run to fetch the police. Again, while we were children, before our minds are distorted by what we erroneously call thought (but which is only an idle luxury-habit), Mr Punch beating his wife causes us to laugh very loudly. This instance, he said, would also prove how much more useful movements were than words, since for ten who would laugh at a Punch and Judy show, hardly one would smile at the wittiest things in Pascal. It was only on reflection that I could altogether make his views my own, for it is not easy for us to give up opinions we have held ever since we can remember. To test the movements appropriate to various emotions, this professor had invented a machine, which, by reason of the changes in electrical resistance a body undergoes under the action of the passions, recorded the feelings of any person subjected to it. This machine he had just brought to perfection, and to give me a demonstration, he sat me in a chair made of some amalgam unknown to me, and fitted with sockets into which my head, hands and feet were clamped. A piece of wireless apparatus, supplied with a diaphragm such as make a part of our telephone receivers, was placed over my heart, and, my loins being bared, my lumbar vertebrae were played upon by a peculiar ray. Above my head, where I could not see it, was placed a marker, much like our telegraph morse-code dials, but corrugated and rayed after the manner of a fan. The professor could watch this while evolving before me the strange movements I could connect with nothing I had ever seen, and so could vary his gestures according to the results shown. After about a quarter of an hour of erudite passes, the professor, wiping the sweat from his brow, triumphantly announced the successful issue of his experiment, and asked me what emotion I felt. At that moment, having overcome my awe, I was filled with a profound sense of pity, and on my confessing this, the professor danced with glee. Crying “Typical! Typical!” he pointed at the dial; but as the needle showed ‘Lust tempered with Sentimentality’ I could not but feel that his wonderful invention needed alteration in a few details to perfect it. Nevertheless, while doing up my braces, I framed a few remarks to make known my pleasure at seeing the drama make such strides in his hands; and promising to meet at a later day we parted with many expressions