For the sake of speed, do not ever interrupt his kind!
XXV
THE CONFESSIONS OF A CRITIC
I met a prominent literary critic the other evening. A review signed with his name or even with his initials is apt to make or mar the work treated therein.
Now, I have not a little hypnotic power, and the mischievous idea came into my head to hypnotize him and make him “confess.”
We were sitting in the reading-room of an up-town club. I led the conversation to the subject of hypnotism, and soon gained the critic’s consent to be put into a trance.
I did not influence him any more than to put his mind in the attitude of truthfully answering what questions I might ask him.