“In the experiments which I am about to show you,” he went on, “I am assisted by my daughter, Anna Sclamowsky,” and, drawing back a curtain at the back of the stage, he led forward a girl who looked to be between sixteen and eighteen years old.

There was no sort of family resemblance between father and daughter.  She was tall and slight, with a small dark head prettily poised on a long, slender neck.  Her face was pale, and her large dark eyes had a startled, frightened look as she gazed at the sea of strange faces below her.  Her father placed her in a chair facing us all; and turning once more to the audience said: 

“I shall now, with your kind permission, put my daughter into a mesmeric or hypnotic trance; and while she is in it, I hope to show you some particularly interesting experiments.  Look at me, Anna—­so—­”

He placed his fingers for a moment on her eyelids, and then stood aside.  Except that the girl was now perfectly motionless, and that her gaze was unnaturally fixed, I could see nothing different in her appearance from what it had been a few moments before.

The Professor now turned to Mr. Danby, who was seated beside me, and said, “If this gentleman will oblige me by stepping up on the stage, he can assure himself by any means he may choose to use, that my daughter is in a perfectly unconscious state at this moment; and if it will give the audience and himself any more confidence in the sincerity of this experiment, he is perfectly at liberty to blindfold her.  Then if he will be kind enough to go through the room and touch here and there any person he may fancy, my daughter, at a word from me, will in the same order and in the same manner touch each of those already touched.  I myself will, during the whole of the time, stand at the far end of the hall, so that there can be no sort of communication between us.”

So saying, Sclamowsky left the stage, and walking down the room, placed himself with his back against the wall, and fixed his gaze upon the motionless form of his daughter.

As I looked back at him, even though separated from him by the length of the hall, I could see the strange glitter and flash of his eyes.  It gave me an uncomfortable, uneasy feeling; and I turned my face again towards the stage, where the good-natured rector was following out the directions he had received.

He lifted Anna Sclamowsky’s arm, which, on his relaxing his hold, fell limp and lifeless by her side; he snapped his fingers suddenly close before her wide-open eyes without producing even a quiver of a muscle in her set face.  He shouted in her ear; shook her by the shoulders; but all without succeeding in making her show any sign of consciousness.  He then tied a handkerchief over her eyes; and, leaving the stage, went about through the room, touching people here and there as he went, pursuing a most tortuous course, and ended at last by placing his hand upon Aunt Phoebe’s diamond necklace.  He then bowed to the Professor to intimate that we were ready to see the conclusion of the experiment.