Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/44

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THE MESMERIC PERIOD

not have in her mind in regard to the persons and places which she took him to visit in spirit. This if true, as has often happened to Mr. Quimby, will place the power of clairvoyance beyond the shadow of a doubt. [Lucius] has it beyond a shadow of a doubt as far as perceiving disease and every internal organ of the body is concerned . . . and we shall write immediately to discover [the facts of the things discerned through] clairvoyance.”

The following excerpt from the Bangor Democrat, April, 1843, gives us the date of Mr. Quimby's first experiment away from his home town, not his “native” town, of Belfast.

“Mr. Quimby of Belfast has visited here by invitation, and made exhibitions in public for the first time out of his native town. Some of our citizens are well acquainted with him, and others are acquainted with citizens of Belfast who have the most entire confidence in him: it is therefore preposterous that he attempts to practice imposition.

“He has with him two young men, brothers, one 23 and the other 17. They are clairvoyant subjects. The first evening the experiments were not successful, but one made in private we will relate as a sample of the rest. The young man was magnetised by Mr. Quimby, when one of our citizens was put in communication with him. In imagination he took the boy to St. John, New Brunswick, before the new Custom House, and asking him what he could see, he said a building with a stone front and the rest of it brick. He then began to read the letters on it. ‘C-u-s-t-o-m. Oh, this is the Custom House.’ He then took him inside of the building and asked what he could see there, when he described the stone steps leading into the second story, the iron railing, curiously formed, and when taken into one of the rooms, described a man employed in writing.

“The gentleman says no one knew where he proposed to take the boy: the boy had never seen the building, and yet he described it as accurately as any one who has seen it. This gentleman's word is not to be questioned by any one.

“Such was the experiment, and others can tell as well as I whether it was humbuggery, witchcraft, a juggler's trick, magic, or the mysterious power that one person exerts over another. Real or unreal, it is extraordinary.”

The next excerpt, from the Waldo Signal, Belfast, Jan. 25, 1844, is typical of those indicating that a general effort