Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/121

Rh a man of good morals and of a kindly nature, always ready to help his neighbor.

In 1838 Charles Poyen, the French hypnotist, visited Belfast, Maine, Quimby’s home town, where he gave a course of lectures on mesmerism with illustrative experiments. At his first exhibition in the town hall his efforts were something of a failure, and he declared that some one in the audience perverted the hypnotic influence. He invited whomsoever it was to remain and meet him after the others had gone. The man who remained was “Park” Quimby, as the townspeople called him. Poyen talked with him and assured him that he had extraordinary hypnotic powers which, if developed, would make him an adept in mesmerism. Quimby was gratified and absorbingly interested. He at once began to experiment on his friends and acquaintances, and whenever he found a willing subject tried to put him into a mesmeric sleep. As he was very often successful in these efforts, people began to talk about him and if any one in the town did an eccentric thing, or had a mishap, the gossips said with waggish appreciation, “Park Quimby has mesmerized him.”

His townsmen came to believe Quimby could compel a man to come in from the street by fixing his eye on him; and nothing more greatly entertained the villagers than to assist at such an exhibition at the corner store. Quimby’s method of hypnotizing at this time was to fix his eyes in a concentrated gaze upon his subject. If he wished thoroughly to mesmerize the subject, that is, to put him to sleep, he