Part 14 (2/2)
”What is that?”
”Why they ought to teach the science of mesmerism in the divinity schools.”
”I don't exactly understand the purpose of the--”
”Perhaps you never heard of the Rev. Mr. Blodgett, missionary to the Fiji Islands? Well, he saved his life once merely by practicing mesmerism. He has told me the story often.”
”I should like to hear it.”
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”It seems that Blodgett in his sinful youth had been a traveling professor of mesmerism; but he had abandoned the business to go into the ministry and to preach to the heathen in Fiji. Well, his church out there got up a Sunday-school picnic, it appears; and when the people all arrived upon the ground, they learned that the provisions had been forgotten. A meeting of the vestry was called, and after a brief consultation it was decided that the only thing which could be done to meet the emergency was to barbecue the minister. The inducement to this course was all the stronger because his salary was six months in arrears, and the church was entirely out of funds. So they built a huge fire; and seizing Blodgett, they began to strip him and to stick him with forks.
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”In order to save himself, he immediately mesmerized each member of the vestry; and when they were all fixed, he called up the Sunday-school scholars, cla.s.s by cla.s.s, and put them comfortably to sleep. Having them all completely under his influence, he gave an entire cla.s.s to each one of the vestrymen, and a.s.sured them that the innocent children were the most luscious kind of missionary. Thereupon the hypnotized vestry immediately ate up the somnambulistic Sunday-school and picked the bones clean. Blodgett was a very conscientious man in the performance of his sacerdotal functions, so he read the funeral service over each cla.s.s as it disappeared.”
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”Rather an excessive meal, I should say.”
”Yes, but they are large eaters, the Fijians. You might say that their appet.i.tes are, in a certain sense, robust.”
”I should imagine that such was the case. But proceed.”
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”Well, when the little ones were gone, Blodgett whispered to the magnetized wardens that their fellow-vestrymen were also succulent propagators of Christianity; whereupon the unconscious wardens fell upon their colleagues, and in a few moments nearly the whole vestry was in the process of a.s.similation. There remained now but the two wardens, and Blodgett, having prevailed upon the younger and more vigorous of the two to eat the other, then seized the slumbering body of his converted but erring brother and stood it on its head in the fire. The Rev. Mr.
Blodgett went away alone from that picnic, and he went with a heavy heart. When he got home, they asked where the rest of the folks were, and he said they were enjoying themselves up there in the woods in their own quiet, innocent way, but that he had to come away in order to visit a sick friend who stood in need of his ministrations. And then he packed his trunk and borrowed a canoe and paddled away to our s.h.i.+p, determined to seek some sunnier clime, where the heathen rage less furiously, and where the popular appet.i.te for warm clergyman is not so intensely vivid.”
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”That is a very remarkable narrative, lieutenant--very remarkable indeed!”
”Yes. But poor Mott was not so lucky.”
”Who was Mott?”
”Why the Rev. Peter Mott--he was a missionary engaged upon one of the other islands. He knew nothing of mesmerism; and when his choir attacked him upon the way home from church one day, he was unable to defend himself, and they ate him.”
”How painful!”
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