Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His People

by Irvin S. Cobb

There stood Jack Irons with his eyes shut, fast asleep. He was still on his feet, bolt upright, but fast asleep—that was the marvel of it—with his hands at his side and the flushed color all gone from his cheeks. It scared us pretty badly, we boys. I think some of the grown men were a little bit scared too. We were glad that none of us had been singled out for this, and yet envious of Jack and his sudden elevation to prominence and the center of things.

Daniel the Mystic seemed satisfied. He mopped drops of sweat off his face. He forked two fingers and darted them like a snake's tongue at Jack, and Jack, still asleep, obeyed them, as if he had been steel and they the two horns of a magnetic horseshoe. He swayed back and forth, and then Daniel the Mystic gave a sharp shove at the air with the palms of both hands—and Jack fell backward as though he had been hit.

But he didn't fall as a boy would, doubling up and giving in. He fell stiff, like a board, without a bend in him anywhere. Daniel the Mystic leaped forward and caught him before he struck, and eased him down flat on his back and folded his arms up across his breast, and that made him look like dead.

More wonders were coming. Daniel the Mystic and D. C. Davello hauled two wooden chairs up close together and placed them facing each other; then lifting Jack, still rigid and frozen, they put his head on the seat of one chair and his heels on the seat of the other and stepped back and left him suspended there in a bridge. We voiced our astonishment in an anthem of gasps and overlapping exclamations. Not one of us in that town, boy or man, had ever seen a person in hypnotic catalepsy.

Before we had had time enough to take this marvel all in, Daniel the Mystic put his foot on Jack and stepped right up on his stomach, balancing himself and teetering gently above all our heads. He was tall and must have been heavy; for Jack's body bent and swayed under the weight, yet held it up in the fashion of a hickory springboard. Some of the men jumped up then and seemed about to interfere. Old Mr. Herman Felsburg's face was red and he sputtered, but before he could get the words out Daniel the Mystic was saying soothingly:

“Be not alarmed, friends. The subject is in no danger. The subject feels no pain and will suffer no injury.”

“Just the same, Mister, you get down off that little boy,” ordered Mr. Felsburg. “And you please wake him up right away. I don't care much to see things done like that in my store.”

“As you say,” said Daniel the Mystic easily, smiling all round him at the ring of our startled faces. “I merely wished to give you a small demonstration of my powers. And, believe me, the subject feels no pain whatsoever.”

He stepped off of him, though, and Jack's body came up straight and flat again. They lifted him off the chairs and straightened him up, and Daniel the Mystic made one or two rapid passes in front of his face. Jack opened his eyes and began to cry weakly. One of the clerks brought him a drink, but he couldn't swallow it for sobbing, and only blubbered up the water when Mr. Felsburg held the glass to his lips. Van Wallace, who looked a little frightened and uneasy himself, gave two of the boys a nickel apiece and told us we had better get Jack home.

Jack could walk all right, with one of us upon either side of him, but he was crying too hard to answer the questions we put to him, we desiring exceedingly to know how he felt and if he knew anything while he was asleep. Just as we got him to his own gate he gasped out, “Oh, fellows, I'm sick!” and collapsed bodily at our feet, hiccoughing and moaning. His sister met us at the door as we lugged Jade in by his arms and legs. Even at home she had her black alpaca sleeves buttoned up to her elbows. I think she must have slept in them. We told her what had happened, or tried to tell her, all of us talking at once, and she made us lay Jack on a little rickety sofa in their parlor—there was a sewing machine in there, too, I noticed—and as we were coming away we saw a negro girl who worked for them running across the street to Tillman & Son's grocery where there was a telephone that the whole neighborhood used.