Part 28

I was born in the extreme west, in Oregon. My grandfather walked across the plains in 1840, and was well acquainted with the Indians. He, with other pioneers, always had a great dislike for missionaries. I asked him why, and he said they caused all the trouble with the Indians. How was that? The Indians were good and peaceable as long as the white man treated them justly. When the missionary came among them and said, “Don’t steal,” the Indian asked, “What is ‘don’t steal’”? and the good missionary explained it to him; the Indian said, “Why, I never thought of that, guess I will try it.” The advent of missionaries is always associated in the “minds” of the early pioneers with the beginning of thievery on the part of the Indians.

The mother says to her children, “Now, little ones, I am going out. I want you to be good, and, while I am gone, don’t play with the fire.” Up to this time the thought of fire was composed of the attributes that it gave forth heat, that it would burn. In fact, these were the only attributes they had of fire other than the comfort to be derived from its heat. For the first time, the mother now associates with the thought of fire that it is something to be played with, and the moment she goes out, responding to her suggestion, the thought of playing with the fire is aroused in the “minds” of the children, and they begin playing with it and are burned, perhaps to death. According to the just laws of to-day, that mother should be arrested for infanticide. She has unintentionally killed her children by speaking the words, “Don’t play with the fire,” and is just as guilty of their death, as though she left a can of nitroglycerin for them to play with. If we wish children to keep from the fire, we should say to them, “Now, little ones, move all your toys over in this corner of the room; I want you to play here until I come back.” We have said something. It was all affirmative. We told them what we desired them to do, not what we desired them not to do. Every time we use the word “don’t,” we make a positive affirmation against ourselves. Mothers are so small-minded that they believe their daughters to be as experienced as themselves—in bad—always harping to them “Don’t do this, that and the other,” things that up to this time the girls never thought of. Many girls are ruined by their mothers trying to make them good through their “don’ts,” arousing a series of ideas just contrary to those desired.

Why is it that ministers’ sons are proverbially “bad”? Because sin is being instilled in their minds by the constant mention of sinful acts, preceded by the word “don’t,” the good father always striving to find “badness” which he tells the son not to do, thus telling him of sins hitherto unthought of.

Tell the children what to do; it is quicker and comprehensive. Say something. Oh! if I could only get the mothers and teachers to comprehend that a negative is always an affirmative against, or the opposite to what you are trying to say. Learn to say something. Here is a common expression, “I will not see you until to-morrow.” That is not what you intend saying, you intend to say that you will see me to-morrow. You have no way of being certain that you will not see me before, and may see me a dozen times before to-morrow, but what you mean to say is that you will try or endeavor to see me to-morrow.

A child is playing in the street, and you say to it, “Don’t play in the street.” Is that what the child desires to know? No. What the child desires to know is where it may play; again, you say to the child, “Don’t stand out in the rain,” but what you intend to say is, “Come in out of the rain.” Say something and perhaps your hearer will comprehend you, but when you use a negative you are saying nothing (?), and “nothing” is incomprehensible.

The tone in which a word is uttered is of more importance than the word itself. To illustrate: A mother says to her child, “If you don’t stop that, I’ll whip you.” The child continues, seeing in the mother’s face an expression which, associated with the tone, plainly says “continue,” as they have forced a continuance of the thought, being positive against the words uttered. After a few years, the mother says to her husband, “We must remove from this locality, as the neighbors’ children are teaching ours to lie.” (Do you see it?)

Many times have I lectured before the pupils of the normal schools in many states, and must say that I found the mode of teaching the most ridiculous attempt at instruction imaginable. If I had a ten-year-old boy, reared with me, who did not possess more actual knowledge than any of the pupils I have lectured before in the normal schools, I would be tempted to spank him, or to send him to an institution for the imbecile. These poor would-be teachers, having no experience in life, seated day after day on a bench, having words poured into their ears without the association of the other senses, it being impossible to get a conception with less than two, or a comprehension without affecting three senses—and one sense only, their hearing being affected, the words poured into their ears are merely idle ones, and then these poor creatures are supposed to go out into the world to teach children that, which they, themselves, have failed to comprehend. Not the fault of the teachers, but the fault of the scientific (?) manner of teaching. Our teachers show us (through the eye) how to do something which they do through the feeling-sense. Our eyes cannot accept feeling memories. You show (?) me how to pare an apple? No, you allow me to see you pare an apple. Schools, other than those of manual training, are failures.

Here is a suggestion that will make a fortune for some ingenious lover of children. Make a set of the letters of the alphabet in pieces, each to fit only in its proper place; have the joints of a pronounced angle, curve or square, so that the child can be taught to fit, correlate, “think”; to learn that an acute angle will not fit a right angle or circle, et cetera. The moment the child has learned this, it has learned to “think,” and not before. When this has been learned, the child will instantly, from out the heap, pick the parts (attributes) that form the letter. Reader, if you had such an alphabet, you could not instantly do so. You are not a ready thinker.

Pictures are false, one has to be taught to read them. Showing a child a picture of a cow, saying “cow,” associating form (?) and sound, starts the thought, but not of the real cow. After a child has seen a real cow, the picture may recall the true memory. A picture is only a word. Writing arouses sound memory, and a picture arouses sight memory, but the real thing must first be registered in the memory.

I knew a lad of twelve years exceptionally bright, who went into the country, looked at a cow for five minutes, and said, “That must be a cow.” This lad had exceptionally fine tutors and opportunities for learning, yet it took him five minutes to deduce that he was looking at a cow. The suggestion of the environment did more to force the conviction than anything that he had seen pictured.

Tell the children what to do. All thoughts are composed of sense impressions, therefore impress the proper senses. I may watch a blacksmith for a lifetime, yet cannot make a horseshoe until my sense of feeling acquires the proper memory. Three senses must be affected to form a comprehensive thought.

Can a man remain in business and sell goods which he fails to deliver? Can a merchant who has no goods to deliver accumulate money enough to establish himself in the respect of business men? Can the manager of an opera house afford to pay fifty dollars a night expenses for a week, and allow a man who has no goods to deliver to occupy his house? Can an established printer for a one-third cash payment afford to print an entire order, if the party he is printing for has no goods to deliver in order to pay his bills? Can a man with no goods remain in a state for a year, in a town for a week and earn a living? Prima facie, whose word carries the most weight, the proprietor of a store or one of his cheap hirelings? Many of my hirelings have exposed (?) me. During my first two years on the road it was a common occurrence every time I refused to raise salaries for somebody to expose (?) me. To date, two of them are in the penitentiary for life, another a paralytic; or, in other words, those who made the alleged exposés were all degenerates. Why is the word of the employé having nothing at stake, taken in preference to that of the proprietor, whose money and reputation are at stake? It is not, except by the degenerates, who are prone to believe everything “bad.”

After my New York City engagement, the most sensational exposé (?) was effected. The fellow who did so thought I had then left for Lansing, Michigan. I met his first attempt, which was a failure. After I did leave, he succeeded in furnishing the New York papers with some sensational stories. The exposés (?) were made as to the sleeping act (hibernation). The first proof of the falsity of his statements is that he never made a sleep for me. Only these sleeps were made during my Eastern tour, viz.: In New York, Kilmer; Hartford, Conn., Stevenson; New Haven, Conn., Slinker; Meriden, Conn., Leonard; Bridgeport, Conn., Kilmer; Willimantic, Conn., Mahoney.

My advent in New York was as follows: I arrived in New York City with some six subjects, and opened in the Herald Square theater one afternoon, before about six hundred doctors; demonstrating with my subjects many things that were contradictions to what the medical profession taught, particularly the three different rates of pulsation, simultaneously. The subjects were stripped to the waist, allowing no possibility of trickery, and this test done some three or four times with each. Some of the doctors claimed that the subjects were trained. Even now, I will admit that for the sake of argument, but it still proves my point, that the heart does not control the circulation; otherwise it could not be trained. Just so, some people say the subjects are not hypnotized. Still, if they were not hypnotized they are in a condition, and whatever that condition is, I call it hypnotized. I will not fight for the term, words mean but little.

I then opened at Hammerstein’s Olympia theater. My managers informed me that when people in New York City visited the theater, they went to see a show, not to take part in it; that volunteers were impossible; that I had better get some subjects. I put an advertisement in one of the papers, had many applicants, and on a Sunday afternoon I hypnotized some sixty, put them to work and picked out the better ones, to whom I paid one dollar a performance. Now, if they were “fakers,” they demonstrated themselves to be more clever than any actors in New York City, and they should have been drawing three hundred dollars per week; but, through the “fake,” or whatever you want to call it, I possessed the ability to make great actors out of this raw material in one hour, and at one dollar per night. You, gentle reader, say, “Ah, you are clever.” No, when you claim that you say I am a fool, because it is certain that if I could so teach people, Manager Frohman would hire me at an enormous salary as a stage manager to furnish him with actors at one dollar per night. I am very certain that if I am so clever, and could rehearse and teach these subjects to do as they did in the brief time I had, the schools of acting in New York City would pay me a large salary to either work for them or to keep out of the business.

This degenerate, who made the alleged exposé, was the chum of a Bowery professor then giving exhibitions in a dime museum in Fourteenth Street. His chum failed to teach him to take on hypnosis. After thirteen hours, an hour each day, I succeeded in teaching this fellow to take on hypnosis, after which he proved to be a clever subject. I took him on the road with me, and in two of the cities we visited, had to send him out of town to prevent his being arrested. To-day, the police of Bridgeport have, pigeon-holed, a criminal warrant against him.

In his exposé, he claims to have visited Europe; to have been used in exhibitions by Charcot and others. I doubt if he has been six miles at sea; and Charcot gave none but private demonstrations, and those with only inmates of the Hospital Salpetriere. He went to the newspapers and stated that he was not hypnotized; that he was “faking,” and asked the reporters to say to him, “Drowsy, sleepy, et cetera,” as Santanelli did; that he would go to sleep, stick pins into himself and become cataleptic. I can teach any subject to do this thing in three minutes, in fact, I can do it myself through a pre-inspiration, and at no time do I need to thoroughly lose consciousness. Later on, he made a twenty-four hour sleep to show that he could simulate it.

Now, dear reader, did you ever wake up on a Sunday morning too late for breakfast and try to go to sleep, to lie there until lunch-time. I will promise that before lunch-time you will get up. You cannot lie awake five minutes with your eyes closed. You cannot lie abed all day if you are well and awake. I will give a thousand dollars to the man who, free from hypnosis or drugs, will sit in a crowd for three minutes without opening his eyes.

This clever lad told how the bed was full of tubes to supply him with food; how ham sandwiches were handed to him. Oh, no; I am too clever for anything like that, if I had wanted to feed him, would have given him food in capsules or tablets. Just imagine a man eating ham sandwiches lying on his back for seven days. If not digested, they would kill him; if digested, the functions must be active.

PLATE V]

Now comes the strange part. This clever (?) fellow, like the clever (?) public, told all about the eating, never once mentioning thirst. Man can go fifty or sixty days without food, but must have liquids. Being for seventy-two hours without water or liquids will always produce insanity, except through hypnosis. In these exposés nothing has ever been said as to the method used to give them water. Nothing has been said as to the emptying of the bladder. If food is taken into the stomach and digested, the secretions must be at work; if the secretions are at work, the bowels will move. These things were all overlooked in these exposés; the stories were told of tubes in the bed, as to procuring food, et cetera, but nothing was said of how the subject’s system was freed of the waste from the food given him.

A story was told of his lying in a cage; this act I have never performed, but have proposed it, agreeing, if the profession desired such a test, to lay a naked subject on a sheet on a bed, put a cage over all, and seal it to the floor so as to demonstrate that nothing was passed to the subject; but the wise and learned medical profession cared for no test that demonstrated, through suggestion, the possibility of suspending hunger, thirst, bowel and kidney action; such knowledge they did not care to learn as it contradicted their teachings.

During the New York sleep, made by Kilmer, he was watched night and day by relays of students from Bellevue Hospital. When arrangements were being made, one student, who hoped to graduate that spring, insisted on having charge of the entire affair, which, finally, was agreed upon. I had nothing to do with the arrangements, which were made by my manager, whom I had only known a week. If it were a “fake,” it is strange that I should allow the details to be handled by a stranger. This would-be doctor took charge of the sleeper, stayed up some forty-eight hours, when off watch, hiding in a box to catch us feeding him. On the Wednesday night when he stood before the audience and told them that the experiment was fair, and that I had done as claimed, he was very angry. When he took charge, he told his chums that he would expose the fraud and thereby get a big advertisement for himself when he began practicing, but when he found out there was no fraud to expose, he regretted the loss of sleep and the time wasted; and later presented a bill to me for services rendered, which bill as yet is unreceipted.

The thought that a man with a “fake” would, could or dared to open at Hammerstein’s with the proposition that I made is ridiculous. The sleeper to be examined, weighed, and watched from being naked to putting on a sound pair of silk tights, a silk shirt, a pair of silk pajamas, to lie on a large mattress covered with a crumb cloth (all previously examined), and for no one but the committee to touch the subject, I not going nearer than five feet from him (giving my exhibition on the stage would bring me that close). The thought of it being other than genuine could only appear in the “mind” of an ignoramus, or some one looking for newspaper notoriety.

During the test of a twenty-four hour sleep made for the New York Herald (no test being of any value of less than seventy-two hours), the wise doctors who knew nothing of hypnosis, tested this subject as to his feeling. For Heaven’s sake, what has feeling to do with hypnosis? They stuck pins into him, they dropped water on his eyelids; they put him through all kinds of torture, but through pure fortitude (?) he stood it. When this is possible all laws of suggestion can be overcome. When “normally,” a man can control what the doctor calls his reflexes, he is worthy of more money than he got out of the alleged exposé.

One wise (?) doctor called to him that there were rats in the room, and because the subject did not respond, said he was not in hypnosis, because the hypnotized subject responds to “suggestion.” Why, if the subject could hear and respond to him he would be awake, because that is what constitutes the waking state. The subject did not hear him, did not respond to him, thereby proving that he was in hypnosis. After the subject was awakened, they asked him if he did not suffer severe pain while they dropped water on his eyes; and, like a good liar, he said, “Yes,” the answer being put into his mouth by the question asked. Why, if he suffered from the dropping of the water on his eyelids the reflexes would have acted, the doctors would have seen it, and the subject could not have endured it. But this subject knew what he was up against, that the doctors were not testing him as to hypnosis, but were simply there to prove their views as to suggested anesthesia, he taking the pre-inspiration that he would sleep for the twenty-four hours and suffer no pain, which he did. The wise (?) doctors named everything that he did and then asked him a question; or, in other words, they put the answers in his mouth, which he gave them, taking his word for it that he could endure pain and suspend his reflex actions without hypnosis. These doctors knew this to be an impossibility, yet the desire for newspaper notoriety was so strong that they pretended to accept this degenerate’s word. Assuming that he could do so, proved nothing. Lack of feeling is not hypnosis. How can a man prove or disprove something which he knows nothing about? I, myself, could prove no hypnotist to be a fake; all that would be possible for me to do would be to force the hypnotist to produce a phenomenon that would be satisfactory to me.

I perform many operations on hypnotized subjects. The two severest are the stretching of the rectum and the cutting around the tender phrenum. With the first I always get a groan, with the other a very pronounced reflex action, and yet when the subject awakens he remembers nothing of it. The extent of pre-inspiration I do not know, but in my long years of experience, have met with but three, viz.: no feeling, rigidity, awakening.

These alleged exposés have all been good advertising, inasmuch as intelligent people are in no hurry to take the word of one who has nothing at stake against one who has everything.