Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/122

84 would make passes across the subject's forehead, continuing his strokes down the shoulders and the length of the arms, shaking his hands after every pass. His subjects professed to thrill and tingle as though electric currents had passed through them, and some of them would perform Quimby's hypnotic commands, however absurd they might be. Quimby soon found an unusually good subject in a youth named Lucius Burkmar. As his experiments with this young man absorbed his interest and attracted considerable attention, he abandoned his workshop and devoted himself to mesmerism.

In his clock-tinkering days in Belfast, Park Quimby had been regarded as eccentric, and his home town now thought him quite mad in his new rôle. A few persons took him seriously and sought to have him cure minor illnesses, but more often he was derided, and sometimes even condemned as an infidel. Not appreciated at home, he left Belfast, taking Burkmar with him, and together they gave exhibitions in other towns where he was not so well known to his audiences and could command greater respect for his hypnotic feats. These are said often to have been so startling as to frighten susceptible persons, arousing in them suspicion of witchcraft and magic. More than once on his travels he stirred up a mob from which he and Burkmar had to escape by taking to their heels.

Wonder-working soon proving not entirely agreeable as a method of earning a living, Quimby returned to Belfast and settled down in his workshop again until another mesmerist visited the town in the