Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1887 — The Art of Mind-Beading. [ARTICLE]

The Art of Mind-Beading.

Sebastian George, the amateur “mind-reader,” in a letter to the Boston Herald, describing his remarkable gift, gives the following as his theory as to how mind-reading is accomplished: When my subject sees an object it is not the eye that sees, but the brain, using the eye as a conductor. The more vividly anything is pictured before the eye the greater the tremor of the brain, and the more certain the mind of its object. The tremor established in my subject’s brain travels throughout the system, and would evidently go out into the atmosphere, or ether, perhaps to influence things we know nothing of, but here the mindreader steps in and receives the electric current (for this I believe it is) into his nerves, it travels to his brain, and there again the object is reproduced. With me it is certainly very dim, but the real object is pictured the.e, and I see with another’s eyes. Then, without contact, I receive the tremor through the conducting ether, and when my nerves are in their most susceptible mood, or on a par with my subject’s, I would be just as sure of success. There is no supernatural power about it whatever; it is but a plain, commonsense thing, which, however, we can not quite fathom. If a person is not looking at an object, but making a mental picture of it, of course the idea gathered by the thought-revealer is not so distinct as when his eyes are fixed upon it, as a natural consequence. When an object is hidden, there is no double work to do if the mind-reader has had no previou knowledge of what the article is to be, but even then I will guarantee to state emphatically whether it is the object or not when it has been found, and in nearly every case will tell what it is before the search is ended. A gentleman, recently, about to pay his doctor’s bill, said: “Well, doctor, as my little boy gave the measles to all my neighbors’ children, and as they were attended by you, I think you can afford, at the very least, to deduct 10 per cent, from the amount of my bill for the increase of business we gave you.”