“You were. You made elaborate fun of me in this very room.”
“I did not, Clemens.”
“It's a lie, Howells, you did.”
I detailed to him the conversation of that time—with the stately argument furnished by Boyesen in the fact that a patient had actually been killed by a mind-curist; and Howells's own smart remark that when the mind-curist is done with you, you have to call in a “regular” at last because the former can't procure you a burial permit.
At last he gave in—he said he remembered that talk, but had now been a mind-curist so long it was difficult for him to realize that he had ever been anything else.
Mrs. H. came skipping in, presently, the very person, to a dot, that she used to be, so many years ago.
Mrs. H. said: “People may call it what they like, but it is just hypnotism, and that's all it is—hypnotism pure and simple. Mind-cure!—the idea! Why, this woman that cured me hasn't got any mind. She's a good creature, but she's dull and dumb and illiterate and—”
“Now Eleanor!”
“I know what I'm talking about!—don't I go there twice a week? And Mr. Clemens, if you could only see her wooden and satisfied face when she snubs me for forgetting myself and showing by a thoughtless remark that to me weather is still weather, instead of being just an abstraction and a superstition—oh, it's the funniest thing you ever saw! A-n-d-when she tilts up her nose-well, it's—it's—Well it's that kind of a nose that—”
“Now Eleanor!—the woman is not responsible for her nose—” and so-on and so-on. It didn't seem to me that I had any right to be having this feast and you not there.