instruments, and, after drawing them four or five times over the spot,
declared that it changed to a paler color, and on repeating the use of
them a few minutes longer, that it had almost vanished, and was scarcely
visible, and departed in high triumph at her success." The lady who
underwent the operation assured the narrator "that she looked in the
glass immediately after, and that not the least visible alteration had
taken place."

It would be a very interesting question, what was the intellectual
character of those persons most conspicuous in behalf of the Perkinistic
delusion? Such an inquiry might bring to light some principles which we
could hereafter apply to the study of other popular errors. But the
obscurity into which nearly all these enthusiasts have subsided renders
the question easier to ask than to answer. I believe it would have been
found that most of these persons were of ardent temperament and of
considerable imagination, and that their history would show that
Perkinism was not the first nor the last hobby-horse they rode furiously.
Many of them may very probably have been persons of more than common
talent, of active and ingenious minds, of versatile powers and various
acquirements. Such, for instance, was the estimable man to whom I have
repeatedly referred as a warm defender of tractoration, and a bitter
assailant of its enemies. The story tells itself in the biographical
preface to his poem. He went to London with the view of introducing a
hydraulic machine, which he and his Vermont friends regarded as a very
important invention. He found, however, that the machine was already in
common use in that metropolis. A brother Yankee, then in London, had
started the project of a mill, which was to be carried by the water of
the Thames. He was sanguine enough to purchase one fifth of this
concern, which also proved a failure. At about the same period he wrote
the work which proved the great excitement of his mind upon the subject