to leave the body and visit the gods.  Some of the metaphysical phenomena are remarkable and even startling.  They cannot be explained.  You have doubtless read of the wonderful fakir, Ram Lal, who appears in F. Marion Crawford’s story of “Mr. Isaacs,” and there is a good deal concerning this class of people in Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim.”  Those two, by the way, are universally considered the best stories of Indian life ever written.  You will perhaps remember also reading of the astonishing performances of Mme. Blavatsky, who visited the United States some years ago as the high priestess of Theosophy.  Her supernatural manifestations attracted a great deal of attention at one time, but she was finally exposed and denounced as a charlatan.

Among the higher class of fakirs are many extraordinary men, profound scholars, accomplished linguists and others whose knowledge of both the natural and the occult sciences is amazing.  I was told by one of the highest officials of the Indian Empire of an extraordinary feat performed for his benefit by one of these fakirs, who in some mysterious way transferred himself several hundred miles in a single night over a country where there were no railroads, and never took the trouble to explain how his journey was accomplished.

The best conjurers, magicians and palmists in India are fakirs.  Many of them tell fortunes from the lines of the hand and from other signs with extraordinary accuracy.  Old residents who have come in contact with this class relate astounding tales.  While at Calcutta a young lady at our hotel was incidentally informed by a fortune-telling fakir she met accidentally in a Brahmin temple that she would soon receive news that would change all her plans and alter the course of her life, and the next morning she received a cablegram from England announcing the death of her father.  If you get an old resident started on such stories he will keep telling them all night.

Of course you have read of the incredible and seemingly impossible feats performed by Hindu magicians, of whom the best and most skillful belong to the fakir class.  I have seen the “box trick,” or “basket trick,” as they call it, in which a young man is tied up in a gunny sack and locked up in a box, then at a signal a few moments after appears smiling at the entrance to your house, but I have never found anyone who could explain how he escaped from his prison.  This was performed daily on the Midway Plaisance at the World’s Fair at Chicago and was witnessed by thousands of people.  And it is simple compared with some of the doings of these fakirs.  They will take a mango, open it before you, remove the seeds, plant them in a tub of earth, and a tree will grow and bear fruit before your eyes within half an hour.  Or, what is even more wonderful, they will climb an invisible rope in the open air as high as a house, vanish into space, and then, a few minutes after, will come smiling around the nearest street corner.  Or, if that is not wonderful enough, they will take an ordinary rope, whirl it around their head, toss it into the air, and it will stand upright, as if fastened to some invisible bar, so taut and firm that a heavy man can climb it.