I said half-aloud, "if a creature so beneath myself in constancy of will
and completion of thought can wrest from Nature favours so marvellous,
what could not be won from her by me, her patient persevering seeker?
What if there be spirits around and about, invisible to the common eye,
but whom we can submit to our control; and what if this rod be charged
with some occult fluid, that runs through all creation, and can be so
disciplined as to establish communication wherever life and thought can
reach to beings that live and think? So would the mystics of old explain
what perplexes me. Am I sure that the mystics of old duped them selves
or their pupils? This, then, this slight wand, light as a reed in my
grasp, this, then, was the instrument by which Margrave sent his
irresistible will through air and space, and by which I smote himself, in
the midst of his tiger-like wrath, into the helplessness of a sick man's
swoon! Can the instrument at this distance still control him; if now
meditating evil, disarm and disable his purpose?" Involuntarily, as I
revolved these ideas, I stretched forth the wand, with a concentred
energy of desire that its influence should reach Margrave and command
him. And since I knew not his whereabout, yet was vaguely aware that,
according to any conceivable theory by which the wand could be supposed
to carry its imagined virtues to definite goals in distant space, it
should be pointed in the direction of the object it was intended to
affect, so I slowly moved the wand as if describing a circle; and thus, in
some point of the circle--east, west, north, or south--the direction could
not fail to be true. Before I had performed half the circle, the wand of
itself stopped, resisting palpably the movement of my hand to impel it
onward. Had it, then, found the point to which my will was guiding it,
obeying my will by some magnetic sympathy never yet comprehended by any
recognized science? I know not; but I had not held it thus fixed for
many seconds, before a cold air, well remembered, passed by me, stirring
the roots of my hair; and, reflected against the opposite wall, stood the