A Telepathic Wooing.
BY JAMES BUCKHAM.
Dr. Amsden was utterly and hopelessly in love with beautiful Miriam Foote. But, in spite of his six feet of splendid manhood—or, perhaps, because of them—the young doctor was so timid in the presence of the fair sex, and particularly in the presence of the fascinating Miriam, that he could no more bring himself to utter a syllable of sentiment to that young woman than he could walk up to the venerable and dignified president of the State Medical Association and tweak his nose! The two things seemed equally preposterous and impossible.
At this juncture of affairs, curiously enough, there fell into the hands of Dr. Amsden a book that offered a magical solution of the problem that perplexed him,—viz., how to make love to the woman who had ensnared his heart, without being conscious of doing it. This book was called “The Law of Psychic Phenomena,” and its central theory was that the “subjective mind,” or soul, of any person, by a process of auto-suggestion, may enter into communication with the subjective mind of another person, at any distance whatsoever. A condition of sleep, either cataleptic or natural, is induced by the agent in himself; but previously to falling to sleep he must concentrate his whole mental energy and will-power upon the determination to convey a certain image, or message, or both to the subjective mind of the person with whom he wishes to communicate. Then away goes his spirit—his phantasm—while he is buried in unconscious slumber, appears in his very image to the person designated, and delivers the message with his very voice and manner. Truly, a marvelous theory, and of untold significance to timid lover’s and bashful solicitors of every kind.
According to this theory, Dr. Amsden, in order to make telepathic love to Miriam Foote, need simply drop to sleep, on a certain night, with a strong determination to send his phantasm to the young woman with an eloquent plea of affection. That was all. It was not even necessary for him to furnish the general substance, introduction, or any portion of this glowing address. He need simply specify that it should be passionate and rich in verbal color,—ordering a proposal much as he would a dinner at a first-class hotel, with perfect confidence that at the proper time it would be served in proper form. To be sure, this method of wooing was not in strict accordance with the traditional etiquette of such affairs. It might even be considered that this proposal by a sort of phantasmal proxy was hardly fair to the object of the experiment. A ghost is, after all, but a ghost, whether it be attached to a bodily tenement or be simply a spirit at large, and even the most heavenly minded young woman might cherish a prejudice in favor of a fleshly lover. On the other hand, however, the choice lay not between two methods of wooing, but between this and none at all; and how easy, how delightful a method of making a proposal of marriage. It could all be performed, like a painful surgical operation, during merciful sleep. Then the lover when next he met the lady in his every-day person would know by her manner whether she had accepted or rejected him. The more Dr. Amsden considered this fascinating project the more trivial seemed his scruples against its fulfilment. Indeed, he asked himself judicially, was it not a fundamental doctrine of metaphysics that only the soul was real, and so-called matter was simply the shadow cast by the spirit? This being the case, his vulgarly named ghost was in reality no ghost at all, while his bodily presence was the real phantasm.
Having arrived at this comfortable, though to the lay mind slightly abstruse, conclusion, Amsden wavered no longer. “I will do it,” he said, jumping to his feet. “I will do it to-night—or—no, a few days must be given to subduing the flesh and concentrating the energies of the subjective mind. On Saturday evening, at the time of my regular weekly call, I will make an end to this painful uncertainty. Though I cannot but hope that she looks upon my suit with favor, I shall never dare to broach the subject of love openly in the flesh. My ghost—or, at least, what is vulgarly known as a ghost—shall speak, and I will abide by the result.”
On his return from dinner that evening Dr. Amsden locked all the doors and darkened all the windows of his apartments. Then, after smoking a meditative cigar, he went to bed. It was barely eight o’clock in the evening when his head touched the pillow, but, as he had planned to send his image to Miss Foote at precisely nine o’clock, before that young lady should have retired to her chamber, he wished to have ample time to get himself to sleep. Besides, he was really tired and drowsy, which was certainly a favorable condition for his experiment. He had feared that he would be excited and nervous; but already the suggestion of sleep which he had been constantly reiterating for the past hour was beginning to tell upon his brain. The formula, “I am about to go to sleep, I am becoming sleepy, I sleep,” was having a most magical effect.