Disgrace and ignominy descend swiftly upon me. My maiden aunt prepares to leave the house, declaring she will never enter it again. My parents, who expect great things at her demise, beseech her forgiveness in vain. I am banished from the firelit circle to my own room, up to which a step presently approaches, striding away from the disorder and hysterics downstairs. My father enters with a long slender implement behind his back—an implement which, from former experience, I know portends woe terrific.
I draw the curtain—I am chastised and broken in body and spirit. For a whole week I keep severely aloof from the awful bunkum tyrant, and then, alas! I am drawn again to the hall, where he is performing as remorselessly as the silly fly is drawn to enmesh himself in the spider’s web.
The next time I played a trick on my family I took good care it should be of a kind that would do no one—not even the most hypersensitive individual—any harm. Needless to say, my aunt was not of the circle.
Thought-Reading Extraordinary
I told them briefly and airily that I was now about to exhibit my wonderful skill in thought-reading. Perhaps I should add that my sister Jane, who adores me, was chosen as my confederate. Bidding them fix on a number, which I would at once discover by the simple means of placing my fingers on their temples, I withdrew with a bland smile into the passage.
When I returned they giggled a little, and one twelve-year-old cynic of the opposite sex piped out scornfully—
“You’ll never guess it, Tom. You can’t possibly—so there.”
This maiden, often a thorn in my flesh, I silenced with a severe frown.
“If you please, I must request the audience to be perfectly silent, to concentrate their minds—those of you who possess them——” I paused to scowl at my pink-and-white torment—“concentrate them absolutely on the chosen number. I am not going to guess it. I am going to discover it by means of thought transference, and, as the strain is very great, I must ask you to be perfectly silent.”
“It’s like having our photo taken,” whispered the torment, but some one bumped her ribs, and she was reluctantly silent.