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24 undoubtedly was at this period, it had, at various times, been infinitely queerer. There was a certain memorable month, shortly after her husband’s decease, when Mrs. Grubb allowed herself to be considered as a compensated hostess, though the terms "landlady" and "boarder" were never uttered in her hearing. She hired a Chinese cook, who slept at home; cleared out, for the use of Lisa and the twins, a small storeroom in which she commonly kept Eldorado face-powder; and herself occupied a sofa in the apartment of a friend of humanity in the next street. These arrangements enabled her to admit an experimenter on hypnotism, a mental healer who had been much abused by the orthodox members of her cult, and was evolving a method of her own, an ostensible delegate to an Occidental Conference of Religions, and a lady agent for a flexible celluloid undershirt. For a few days Mrs. Grubb found the society of these persons very stimulating and agreeable; but before long the hypnotist proved to be an unscrupulous gentleman, who hypnotized the mental healer so that she could not heal, and the Chinese cook so that he could not cook. When, therefore, the delegate de-