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Page 12
March 27. A blank day, as Miss Penclosa goes with
Wilson and his wife to the Suttons'. Have begun Binet
and Ferre's "Animal Magnetism." What strange, deep
waters these are! Results, results, results--and the
cause an absolute mystery. It is stimulating to the
imagination, but I must be on my guard against that.
Let us have no inferences nor deductions, and nothing
but solid facts. I KNOW that the mesmeric trance is
true; I KNOW that mesmeric suggestion is true; I KNOW
that I am myself sensitive to this force. That is my
present position. I have a large new note-book which
shall be devoted entirely to scientific detail.
Long talk with Agatha and Mrs. Marden in the evening
about our marriage. We think that the summer vac.
(the beginning of it) would be the best time for the
wedding. Why should we delay? I grudge even those few
months. Still, as Mrs. Marden says, there are a good
many things to be arranged.
March 28. Mesmerized again by Miss Penclosa.
Experience much the same as before, save that
insensibility came on more quickly. See Note-book A
for temperature of room, barometric pressure, pulse,
and respiration as taken by Professor Wilson.
March 29. Mesmerized again. Details in Note-book A.
March 30. Sunday, and a blank day. I grudge any
interruption of our experiments. At present they
merely embrace the physical signs which go with slight,
with complete, and with extreme insensibility.
Afterward we hope to pass on to the phenomena of
suggestion and of lucidity. Professors have
demonstrated these things upon women at Nancy and at
the Salpetriere. It will be more convincing when a
woman demonstrates it upon a professor, with a second
professor as a witness. And that I should be the
subject--I, the sceptic, the materialist! At least, I
have shown that my devotion to science is greater than
to my own personal consistency. The eating of our own
words is the greatest sacrifice which truth ever
requires of us.
My neighbor, Charles Sadler, the handsome young
demonstrator of anatomy, came in this evening to return
a volume of Virchow's "Archives" which I had lent him.
I call him young, but, as a matter of fact, he is a
year older than I am.
"I understand, Gilroy," said he, "that you are being
experimented upon by Miss Penclosa."
"Well," he went on, when I had acknowledged it, "if I
were you, I should not let it go any further. You will
think me very impertinent, no doubt, but, none the
less, I feel it to be my duty to advise you to have no
more to do with her."
Of course I asked him why.
"I am so placed that I cannot enter into particulars as
freely as I could wish," said he. "Miss Penclosa is
the friend of my friend, and my position is a delicate
one. I can only say this: that I have myself been the
subject of some of the woman's experiments, and that
they have left a most unpleasant impression upon my
mind."
He could hardly expect me to be satisfied with that,
and I tried hard to get something more definite out of
him, but without success. Is it conceivable that he
could be jealous at my having superseded him? Or is he
one of those men of science who feel personally injured
when facts run counter to their preconceived opinions?
He cannot seriously suppose that because he has some
vague grievance I am, therefore, to abandon a series of
experiments which promise to be so fruitful of results.
He appeared to be annoyed at the light way in which I
treated his shadowy warnings, and we parted with some
little coldness on both sides.
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