Read Ebook: Viisikymmentä runoa ja kuusi laulua by Korhonen Paavo

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Ebook has 609 lines and 55205 words, and 13 pages

"They all wanted to see it, and I whistled, snapped my fingers, and called their attention to the fine animal before them. They evidently saw it.

"'A lovely little white pig!' said a young lady.

"'Only it isn't little and it isn't white,' said the silversmith; 'it is a big black fellow,' and he appealed to the others.

"I explained that it was a scarlet pig, and told them it could read and sing.

"'Sing! Oh yes, we hear you!' said the incredulous man sarcastically.

"I snapped my fingers. 'There he goes!' said the artist, 'singing 'Wait till the Clouds Roll By.''

"'I hear singing,' said Incredulous, turning to me. ''Titwillow,' isn't it? How do you work him--the machinery, I mean?'

"The others laughed at him. 'Why, the pig sings,' said the young lady; 'can't you hear him sing? can't you see him sing?'

"'He looks as if he sang. I see his jaws move, and he sounds as if he sang,' persisted Incredulous; 'but he doesn't sing. Pigs don't sing.'

"'Very well, what is it, then?' asked one of the clerks, triumphantly.

"'A tube and a hole in the floor, may be; it's well done, though,' said the doubter.

"'Suppose you go and find the tube,' suggested the artist.

"He went and kicked around where he supposed it to be, tore up a piece of the carpet and looked nonplussed.

"'Yonder's the pig over by the entrance, singing 'A Warrior Bold,'' said the artist, amid laughter.

"The scoffer came back to his seat and said,

"'It's probably ventriloquism.'

"'Aw!' said the silversmith derisively, 'you can't throw the voice any such distance nor make it sound clear and sweet like that. I've made a study of ventriloquism.'

"'Well, I've made a study of pig,' said Incredulous obstinately.

"Then I changed the illusion by making the pig's ear grow out three feet long, and then turning him into an elephant with one leg and four tails.

"Sometimes I turn my class into infants and have them 'play school,' with infinite fun; sometimes I transport them over the seas to Africa or Japan on my enchanted carpet, where for a brief space they enjoy all the delights of travel; sometimes we participate in battles, sometimes visit famous picture galleries, sometimes the artist enjoys a quiet talk with Socrates, or Moses or Confucius, providing both questions and answers in a curious dual action of the mind highly entertaining to the audience.

"The other evening I transformed my artist into President Cleveland. He assumed the character with quiet dignity, but said he had had a hard day's work and was tired.

"'Queen Victoria will visit you this evening, you know,' I said.

"'No!' he exclaimed with surprise. 'I didn't know she was in this country. When did she come?'

"'Yesterday, on the Aurania; here she comes, now.'

"He straightened up as I spoke and received her imaginary Majesty with real dignity and tact. After bowing and shaking hands he said:

"'I have heard with unfeigned pleasure of your Majesty's approach to the capital of the republic, and it is my agreeable privilege to extend to you the freedom of this city and country in behalf of sixty millions of people. Dan, get the lady a chair!'

"As she seemed to seat herself he listened a moment, smiled and said: 'I reciprocate those feelings, as do all Americans, and I trust that the amicable relations so long preserved between this republic and the mighty realm of which you are the honored and beloved ruler may never be broken.'

"'Where can the lady hang her crown?' I asked him. 'It must have a peck of diamonds in it. Can't I take it?'

"He looked scornfully at me and I added: 'Can't the boys manage to get it away from her Majesty when she goes down stairs?'

"'You are a disgrace to this administration, Dan, and have got to be fired out!' the President exclaimed angrily to me, and then he humbly apologized to the Queen.

"He casually added that the fisheries dispute might lead to trouble, and she would be prudent to let our boys get bait along shore where it seemed handiest.

"I know of no other thing in which there is so much entertainment as mesmerism. For the benefit of those who desire to experiment I append certain conclusions from my own experiments here:

"1. About one person in ten can be mesmerized.

"2. The proportion of people who have the 'power' to mesmerize, if it be a power, I do not know.

"3. Mesmerism is a trance and seems to me almost identical with somnambulism.

"4. It is as harmless as sleep. My sensitives occasionally come to me in the daytime to be put to sleep for the purpose of obtaining rest.

"5. Hallucinations that take place under mesmerism are seldom remembered in a subsequent waking state, but are generally recalled with vividness in a subsequent mesmeric state.

"6. Mesmerized subjects do not see the objects or people in the room, or hear any noise whatever except the voice of the operator.

"7. My sensitives could have an arm or a leg amputated, I have no doubt, without suffering any pain.

"8. Some of my sensitives are able to tell what goes on behind them and where they cannot see it, by some occult sense of which I am ignorant. I am at present pursuing study along this line.

"Others here are now experimenting, and I think mesmerism is the coming fashionable 'fad.'

"W. A. CROFFUT."

As long ago as 1843 I was induced to investigate and try this phenomenon mainly for a hygienic purpose and afterwards led on by curiosity. I had no teacher, consulted no works on the subject, but derived all I learned in relation thereto by my own individual experiments, and in parenthesis say that what I learned I hold as above all price in settling in my mind the vexed question, "to be or not to be."

In 1847 I was in Wisconsin, and for the satisfaction of others I was induced to a renewal of experiments in magnetism. I was located with several other families with a view of forming a co-operative colony, so that excepting myself the rest had their residences closely together, whilst mine was half a mile from the rest. The subject at one time was brought up for discussion, and an earnest desire on the part of many to see something of it resulted in my finding a subject to experiment with at once, and fortunately he proved to be an extraordinary one. The finding of property through him in a mesmeric condition was a thing of common occurrence, and in some instances he seemed to be conscious of the mental conditions under which the property was lost. I found that he could take cognizance of what was occurring out of his sight, by pre-arrangements to test him.

"A gentleman of that place decided to call in the aid of Mrs. Stevens; she told him somebody was lost, and not being able to visit the place she drew a map or chart of the locality, giving directions, by which, on his return he was immediately found alive, but died the next day. The day following I was at South Sangerville, and stopping at this gentleman's house, examined the map, which was perfect in every respect. The house and shed were correctly drawn, the mill and pond near the house were marked, the field and woods, two fences over which Mr. Prescott must climb, even to the swinging of the road by the house was definitely given.

"The spot where she said he was, was shown by a large black mark, and he was found exactly in that place. When we consider that Mrs. Stevens never saw this place in her normal condition, it is to me a wonderful test of spirit power."

THE ANCIENT IBERIANS.

"At that point of time touched by the earliest ray of historic knowledge, the eye of the student of human annals sees, occupying the Spanish peninsula, a race of men called Iberians. These old Iberians were not a tribe or clan, but a people, numerous and potential, with a fully developed and virile language, skilled in arms and the working of precious metals, and industriously commercial. This much can be clearly inferred from the extent of their territory and the remnant of them, with their characteristics and habits, which still remain. This old people, themselves a colony from some other country, once existent and highly civilized in the remote past, spread from the Mediterranean Sea to the slopes of the Pyrenees, and all over southern Gaul as far as the Rhone, and flowed westward with a movement so forceful that it included all the British Islands. All this happened 4000 to 5000 B. C. They are older than the Egyptians probably by 1000 years, and were strong enough to attempt the conquest of the known world.

"These Iberians colonized Sicily. They were the original settlers in Italy and pushed their way northward as far as Norway and Sweden, where can still be found among the present inhabitants their physical characteristics--dark skin and jet black hair. This ancient people were not barbarians, but highly civilized. They had the art of writing and a literature. Poetry was cultivated. Their laws were set in verse; and for these laws thus written they claimed an antiquity of 6000 years.

"This ancient race has passed away, as all great races do. The rise and decline of a people are as a day. They have a sunrise, a noon, a sunset, and there remains of them and their splendor nothing but a gloaming, a twilight of a thousand years, perhaps, and after that

OBLIVION'S STARLESS NIGHT.

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