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[left margin] 4 [/leftmargin] THE ARGONAUT. [right margin] MARCH 24, 1888. [/right margin]

[column one] A MODERN PROTEUS.

Some Account of a Mysterious Gift of Personation.

BY ROBERT DUNCAN MILNE.

It is now little more than a week ago since a company of
gentlemen were sitting and talking in a certain room in a cer-
tain club - I am not at liberty to say which - in this city. The
company numbered some eight or ten persons, three of whom
were strangers. I forget how the conversation turned upon
the mysterious and occult - I think, however, now that I con-
sider the whole matter calmly, that the subject was led up to,
with a definite purpose, by one of the gentlemen present, who
had, as it turned out, a vert definite object in doing so. At
any rate, the topic is one possessing a certain charm for the
average human mind, and each of the company was con-
tributing his quotum of information, or idea, to the general
fund.

"Now, take your theosophists," said Robson; "if one can
only credit what they claim, they must be possessed of powers
which ought to make them masters of any situation, either for
good or evil. But what have they done, practically in either
direction?"

"But then," objected Harding, "one of the conditions of
acquirinh control over matter, it must be remembered, is
a course of training which practically robs them of the desire
to use that control."

"And," put in Thurman, "this course of training is said to
so elevate the moral and intellectual nature, as to render an
adept incapable of doing an evil action."

"Madam Blavatsky," remarked the cynical Cook, "is, I
suppose, a case in point. I am of opinion, for one, that all
of her miracles were well-arranged and preconcerted tricks."

"Whatever may be the case with Madam Blavatsky, gen-
tlemen," put in one of the strangers who had been introduced
as a Mr. Wharncliffe, "I do not think that anyone who has
visited India, and seen the performances of the native jug-
glers, can apply the same strictures to them. I have myself
been witness of some most strange and unaccountable feats
in that mysterious country."

The speaker was a tall, dark, fine-looking, bearded man,
of perhaps forty or thereabouts, on whose skin tropical suns
had evidently done their work, of a rather grave and serious
aspect, and distinguished air. Beyond these features, which
are not so rare as to be extraordinary among polished and
travelled gentlemen of any country in the world, there was
another, which at once withdrew him from the conventional
type I have depicted. That was the eye. It was an eye with
a bright, black, dazzling pupil, which would have served to
render its own singular in any company. It was an eye,
too, that seemed to lack, when I first saw it, what I shall term
soul, and depth, and calm. Not that it was forbidding, but,
on the contrary, attractive, and the longer I looked at it, the
more pleasant and attractive did it seem to become.

"My friend, Mt. Wharncliffe, here" explained Harding,
who had introduced him, himself a member of a large mer-
cantile house, "is recently from the East, and can give us, I d
oubt not, some interesting points on the occult from his own
personal experience."

The stranger waved his hand deprecatingly, and assured us
that his knowledge was confined merely to what he had seen.
He was prepared, he said, to philosophize upon causes.

"You have, all of you," he went on, "doubtless read of -
perhaps some of you have seen - those feats or tricks of
legerdemain, performed commonly by Hindoo jugglers of the
better sort; such as planting a seed in a flower-pot, where-
from rises a plant before your eyes; producing bowls of
water, when there was apparently no possible place of conceal-
ment for objects of such dimensions; and all this with no
stage paraphernalia, such as our modern conjurors, who imi-
tate these tricks, have ready to ther hand, but simply upon
the open ground, the spectators standing round. But per-
haps, the most marvelous of these tricks, or deceptions," he
preceeded, "is that in which the juggler plants a wooden pole
in the soil, up which he successively sends a cat, a monkey,
and several other small animals, each of which disappears on
reaching the top - vanishes, so to speak, into thin air. Not a
vestige of them is afterward seen"

"May it not be, " suggested some one, "that this miracu-
lous effect is produced by exerting some sort of influence,
akin to mesmeric, upon the eyes of the spectators? That the
juggler really sends no animals at all up his pole, but merely
makes the spectators think he does."

"Just like that power," remarked some one else, "with
which some mediæval necromancers were supposed to have
been gifted. Scott uses it, if I remember right, in his 'Lay
of the Last Minstrel' - the glamour, I think it was called.
The Lady of Branksome sends some one she does not wish to
be recognized from the castle - or was it the hobgoblin, Gil-
pin? - but anyhow, as he passes the warder at the gate, he
casts the 'glamour' over him, and the warder avers that noth-
ing passed the gate but 'a wisp of hay'."

"But admitting the possibility of the existence of such a
power," said a materialistic doctor, who was present, "upon
what form of matter would it be exerted? On the rays of
light before they reached the retina, so as to cause them to
project a false picture there? or on the substance of the retina
itself? or on the optic nerve, so as to cause it to transmit a
false message to the brain? or upon neither light rays, nor
retina, nor optic nerve, but upon the brain itself, causing it
thereby to substitute an image of its own creation, as in the
case of a lunatic, or of some one else's creation, as in the case
of a mesmerized subject, for the true image which it was phys-
ically incapable of perceiving?"

"The latter, I think, would be the most reasonable solution
of the problem," observed Harding, "always admitting, as you
say, that the power exists."

"If it does not exist," objected another, "what are we to
think of the scores of independent witnesses - gentlemen
of unimpeachable veracity - who testify to the vagaries of the [/column one]

[column two] Hindoo and his pole? We can not believe them all to have
been duped by some cunning trick of legerdemain, for those
who have given accounts of it were mostly men fully alive to
the possibilities of the juggler's art. Equally difficult is it to
comprehend by what power a simultaneous, and precisely sim-
ilar, hallucination could be produced, upon say a score of
spectators, by some extraordinary psychic influence. True,
hallucinations of this very nature may be produced, or are said
to be produced, upon a whole squad of mesmerized subjects
at once. But the witnesses of the Hindoo's feats were not
mesmerized. They were matter-of-fact every-day people, in
full possession of their sober senses, at any rate upon every
other point but this. Were they, then, put under the mes-
meric influence of the Hindoo in this single and solitary partic-
ular? And, if such were the case, is it reasonable to suppose
that any one possessed of such a mysterious and valuable
power, would not turn it to better account than in picking up
chance coins as a wandering juggler? I confess I do not see
my way clear to accepting this view of the question yet."

"I think, gentlemen, I can give a little reminiscence which
may, perhaps, serve to throw some light upon this matter,"
said a voice in somewhat diffident, hesitating tones, which were
more noticeable as they broke the pause which had succeeded
the argument of the last speaker.

I turned like the rest to see who had spoken, as the voice
was unfamiliar. It was a middle-sized, gray-haired, and gray-
whiskered old gentleman, with a benevolent aspect, who
beamed modestly at us through his spectacles, and like Hard-
ing's friend, Wharncliffe, had been brought to the club that
evening by one of the members, I forget which, and intro-
duced to us as Mr. Johnson, a retired merchant, who had
come to California with the object of securing a home for him-
self and family in his later days.

"I hardly know, gentlemen, whether I am justified," re-
sumed Mr. Johnson, with an apologetic air, "in taking part in
the discussion of a subject of which I know so little, and have
myself no personal experience. What I purpose telling you,
if you will allow me, are the experiences of another, and you
must judge for yourselves as to what they are worth. I should
not, in fact, have intruded them at all upon your notice, had
they not seemed to me to be peculiarly apposite to the present
discussion. If you care to hear them, I shall be proud to
serve you, and I can confidently assure you that the recital
will not take long."

We encouragingly gave assent to Mr. Johnson, who there-
upon told the following story:

The scene of my part of the experience, gentlemen, if it can
be called a part at al, was laid in the celebrated prison of
Auburn, which is , as you are aware, one of the princial re-
formatories of New York State. I have for considerable
time past held, and in fact still hold contacts, for supplying a
certain line of commodities to the prison, and as my business
naturally took me there upon occasion, I as naturally became
acquainted with many of the officials connected with the insti-
tution.

About five or six months ago, while there to transact some
business, which I found would entail my waiting for an hour
or two, owing to the absence of the person it was necessary for
me to see, and while sauntering around to kill time, I
fell into conversation with Captain Coulter, the well-known
detective officer, who propsed that we should make a tour of
the prison, he volunteering to be guide. While I flatter my-
self that I have no taste for spectacles of misery, yet having
nothing better to do, I gladly availed myself of the kind offer
of my able mentor, and an able mentor he proved himself to be.

We passed through gallery after gallery, till we arrived at
a portion where the securities seemed to be extra strong. The
structure of the cells, fortified as they were by all the skill that
can be brought to bear upon steel and iron, seemed to offer an
impassable barrier to the criminals confined within, however
daring and ingenious they might be. The cells situated in
that part of the building, my guide explained, were reserved
for the most dangerous and desperate class of criminals.

At length we paused before one of the most forbidding of
the sepulchre-like tenements and the captain asked me to
look through the little square orifice in the door, which seemed
to serve at once for the passage of food, air, and light to the
wretched prisoners inside. I did so, and crouching in a corner
I beheld a grey and repulsive-looking man, his hair and
beard long, unkempt, and straggling. He took not the least
notice our presence, though he must have been, I think,
aware of it. I was unprepared, however, for the - as I thought -
heartless conduct of my guide, the more so, as he had spoken
kindly and sympathetically to many of the prisoners we had
passed, to some of whom, I am almost sure, I observed him
passing money, though so quietly that it could scarcely be per-
ceived. Unaccustomed as I am to the use of slang language,
and averse as I am to the medium of its delivery, even
in recounting it, truth compels me to say that upon the occa-
sion Captain Coulter, after stepping up to the orifice before re-
ferred to, and actually making mouths at the poor, cowering
wretch within, said:

"Come, brace up, old man. None of these fakes. You
can't play it on me. Why can't you give us something better
than that? Make yourself Jay Gould, or Russell Sage, for in-
stance. Have some style about you."

I confess I was shocked at this heartless tirade against an
old and defenseless prisoner, who, however, took not the least
notice of us, and presently we passed on.

"That," said the detective, "is the most dangerous, the most
elusive, and the most inexplicable criminal that it ever has been my
good or bad luck to come across. I saw you were surprised
by the way I treated him, but if you knew about him what I
know, you wouldn't think so."

I became interested to know what could have given this ap-
parently innocuous old man such distinction in the detective's
eyes, and upon our return to the officers' quarters, as I had
still some time to spare, I reverted to the subject, and ques-
tioned my friend regarding him, and what he had done to make
him such an object of official aversion, and to necessitate his
subjection to such rigorous treatment. [/column two]

[column three] "What has he done?" returned the captain, testily; "the
question should rather be, what has he not done? The Lord
only knows what unknonw villainies, with his peculiar powers,
and his peculiar opportunities for mischief, that man, if he can
be called a man, has perpetrated. His is the most extraordi-
nary and incomprehensible case that has ever come under my
notice," he continued, shaking his head. "Nobody can make
head or tail of it. No one really believes me, when I tell them
what has come under my notice. They imagine that I am
laboring under a delusion, and had it not been for a piece of
peculiar good fortune, and , I may add, some very hard and
close work of my own -" ("You see, gentlemen," remarked
Mr. Johnson, parenthetically, "the whole affair impressed me
so much, that having naturally a good memory, and my friends
being pleased to credit me with being something of a raconteur,
I am enabled to give you the story pretty much as Captain
Coulter gave it me") -"the fellow never would have been
brought to justice at all. Even whenI had him 'dead to
rights,' as we call it, he would have escaped, if I had not nailed
him by a ruse. Would you believe it, if I told you," here, the
captain sunk his voice almost to a whisper, and spoke slowly
and impressively, at the same time looking me straight in the
eyes, "would you believe that that old man you saw in that
felon's cell is no more old than I am - at least, such is my firm
conviction - and I am only forty-five? Would you believe
that that man possesses the miraculous faculty of changing his
appearance at will, not by clever manipulation of disguises,
like your ordinary cracksman, or even like some members of
my won profession, but by some mysterious power which
seems to be innate in him? Would you believe that that grey
and decrepit old man, if he were once outside his cell, could and
would walk coolly and easily out of jail, under the noses of all
the wardens and officers of the prison; yes, even under my
own nose, did I not possess an infallible mode of detecting
him and compelling him to resume his natural form. Yes, sir,
he could walk out of that prison in the semblance of the
warden himself if he so desired - at least, that is my firm con-
viction, though, unfortunately,it is nobody else's. Well, I hope
they will not find out its truth some day to their cost."

I did not know, gentlemen, what to make of these words.
Here was one of the most astute members of the metropolitan
detective force, a man whose reputation and whose deeds put
him at the head of his profession, giving expression to a theory
so utterly at variance with common sense, that I did not know
what to think.

"He would have to be a very skillful actor and possess
something of a wardrobe to do such a thing," I at last ventured
to say.

"That is what they all say," returned the captain, impatiently.
"That is the way they all account for this man's powers
- if, in fact, they give him credit for any; for there are many
members of the police, and many reputable citizens outside,
who still consider him a victim of mistaken identity; and, as I
said before, had it not been for the direct testimony I was able
to produce, together with my own unimpeachable reputation,
this incomprehnsible villain would never have been convicted."

"But what did he do?" I asked; "what was the charge
against him? and of what crime is he now convicted?"

"Grand larceny," returned my friend, "and, thanks to me,
he has got the full extent of the law. His time will not be
out for a good many years yet, and, by that time, I hope to
be able to restrain him in confinement by some means or
other, by convincing the public of his true nature. He will, at
any rate, be kept under surveillance."

"But surely," I said, "what he is enduring now is very rig-
orous treatment for such a comparatively simple offense as
grand larceny."

"My only object is to prevent his escape," explained the
captain. "Apart from his being subjected to such confine-
ment, his treatment in the matter of everything else is on a
par with that of criminals of his own class. I have been the
means of putting him where he is, and consider that I was
perfectly justified in doing so."

I shuddered to think of the misery in store for any one who
might be so unfortunate as to incur the displeasure of Captain
Coulter, and wondered whether, after all, the prisoner I had
seen might not owe his wretched condition to some delusion on
the part of the great detective himself; the brightest minds, it
is said, are sometimes subject to such.

"But the best thing I can do is to give you a brief history
of the case," continued the captain, "and then you can judge
for yourself. Something over a year ago, I received a letter
from old Mr. Chisholm, senior partner of the well-known bank-
ing-house of Chisolm, Moffat & Co., requesting me to call
upon him immediately, and, as it was after banking hours when
I received the dispatch, I concluded to call at his house. I
found the old gentleman in a very perturbed state of mind.
He told me that his bank had been robbed that forenoon in a
very mysterious manner. He had stepped out, as was his cus-
tom, about eleven o'clock, and while he was absent, a person,
got up to resemble himself, had used this disguise to secure a
considerable sum of money. It was Mr. Chisholm's custom
to leave the bank at eleven o'clock, and to be gone for about
half an hour. So methodical was he in this respect that the
clerks were surprised when, scarcely two minutes after he had
left, he returned, and walking to his private office, immediately
summoned his confidential clerk by bell. He then told him to
bring him five thousand dollars in gold, in two bags. The
clerk returned with the money, which Mr. Chisholm then put
in his coat-tail pockets, a bag in each pocket, and immediately
left the bank. Though the proceeding was somewhat unusual,
and though Mr. Chisholm had forgotten to leave a memoran-
dum of the sum drawn, nothing more was thought of it. He
again returned at his customary hour, and it was not until the
day's balance was being made up that the teller reminded him
of the morning's incident. To say that Mr. Chisholm and his
clerks were surprised is to give no expression to the general s
tate of feeling, Mr. Chisholm affirming that he had not re-
turned to the bank, as was stated, and had drawn no money
that day, while the clerks were as positive that he had; two of
them averring they had seen him receive the money and put it
in his pocket. It then dawned upon him that he had been so