NATUEE STUDIES. 



some way (the determination of which is what science 

 yet has to seek) to think first of a lion and then of a rose. 

 The interpretation of the trick as a feat of legerdemain 

 is of course quite out of the question. There were 

 thousands of objects of which Mrs. Dickens might 

 have thought first, thousands of which she might have 

 thought next; therefore millions of combinations of 

 two objects of which she might have thought. The 

 conjuror could not possibly, then, have ready to hand, 

 among a multitude of papers, one containing in right 

 order the two Mrs. Dickens had selected. He could 

 not possibly have written those two names on a piece 

 of paper in the moment between her answering ' ' the 

 rose" and opening the paper in her hand at his 

 request. Still less could he have combined (in this 

 momentary interval of time) the accomplishment of 

 this feat, with the extraction of one paper from her 

 hand and the substitution of another, without any 

 knowledge of the change either on her part or on that 

 of the audience, including such a keen observer as her 

 husband. It seems certain then that the conjuror 

 guided her mind by will power to think of the objects 

 whose names he had already written on the paper. 



Dickens describes another feat performed by the 

 conjuror, which, were it not that the first can only be 

 explained as a feat of mind-ruling, we might explain 

 as a trick merely of legerdemain and quickness of 

 vision. But under the actual conditions it seems to 

 indicate powers of mind-reading far more surprising 

 than any ever noticed in parlour experiments. The 



