THE NEBRASKA LOADSTONE.
If there was one man in college whom the rajah thoroughly and heartily detested, it was the captain of the boat club. He had many faults; he was very tall and powerful, and delighted in contrasting the English physique with that of inferior races; by which he meant, among others, the rajah’s race. His manner was abrupt and overbearing, his laugh loud and unmusical. In fact, he grated horribly on the rajah; and it was merely the final straw when, in the exhilaration of a bump supper,—full, as the rajah remarked in disgust, of cow and strong drink,—he called that prince, in playful chaff, a “nigger.” The rajah swore melodiously in Hindustani, and I saw that he meant to be revenged.
In those days the entertainment of the Nebraska Loadstone created a furore. Everybody went to see her, and everybody came away convinced that she possessed marvelous powers. Her peculiar gift—but everybody remembers the details of the performance, and how the tricks were finally, one by one, exposed, so that her adherents and believers were driven from one position to another, until at last they had to fall back on one single performance out of all those that the Loadstone gave, and maintain that on that occasion at least something unexplained and inexplicable did really happen. It is with the events of that particular evening that I am concerned. I think I can throw some light on them.
At first, however, there were many believers and few skeptics. The dean carefully pointed out that Plato nowhere denied the existence of odic force; and the bursar, who was generally supposed to be little better than an atheist, declared that Spencer in one passage impliedly asserted it; even the warden, in his sermon, told us that it was better, according to Bacon, to believe two errors than refuse one truth—which was, to say the least of it, sitting on the fence. But none of these authorities shook the robust skepticism of the captain of the boat club. He knew a conjurer, and the conjurer had told him how it was done, and he was going to expose the Loadstone.
“But why haven’t you?” I urged. “She’s been here a week.”
“He will not be too hard on her at first,” said the rajah, with a little sneer.