vent—and then I'll make your great-grandfatfaer come in and stop the clock. You know I couldn't stop a clock, perched up on a mantel shelf five feet high, with my heels."
"I don't know," said I. "I fancy you're very clever."
"Cleverness has nothing to do with it. I've great magnetism."
"You'd magnetize my great-grandfather down from heaven?"
"Yes, sir, if I could establish communication. You'll see to-night what I can do. I'll satisfy you. If I don't I shall be happy to give you a private sitting. I'm also a healing medium. You don't happen to have a toothache? I'd set you down there and pull it right out, as I'd pull off your boot."
In compliment to this possibility, I could only make him my bow. His, at least, was a "rich nature." I bade him farewell, with the assurance that, skeptic as I was, I would applaud him impartially in the evening. I had reached the top of the hall, on my way out, when I heard him give a low, mellifluous whistle. I turned round, and he beckoned to me to return. I walked back, and he leaned forward from the platform, uplifting his stout forefinger. "I simply desire to remark," he said, "that I'm an honest man!"
On my return to the hotel I found that my impatience for the Professor's further elucidation of his honesty made the interval look long. Fortune, however, assisted me to traverse it at an elastic pace. Rummaging idly on a bookshelf in the tavern parlor, I found, amid a pile of farmers' almanacs and Methodist tracts, a tattered volume of "Don Quixote." I repaired to my room, tilted back my chair, and communed deliciously with the ingenious hidalgo. Here was "magnetism" superior even to that of Professor Fargo. It proved so effective that I lost all note of time, and, at last on looking at my watch, perceived that dinner must have been over for an hour. Of "service" at this unsophisticated hostelry there was but a rigidly democratic measure, and if I chose to cultivate a too elegant absence
