Such are a few of my principal experiments in the mysterious force or agency known as hypnotic suggestion.  Whether or not it could be employed by a bad man for an unworthy purpose I am unable to say.

THE FOURTH ESTATE

MR. MASTHEAD, JOURNALIST

While I was in Kansas I purchased a weekly newspaper—­the Claybank Thundergust of Reform.  This paper had never paid its expenses; it had ruined four consecutive publishers; but my brother-in-law, Mr. Jefferson Scandril, of Weedhaven, was going to run for the Legislature, and I naturally desired his defeat; so it became necessary to have an organ in Claybank to assist in his political extinction.  When the establishment came into my hands, the editor was a fellow who had “opinions,” and him I at once discharged with an admonition.  I had some difficulty in procuring a successor; every man in the county applied for the place.  I could not appoint one without having to fight a majority of the others, and was eventually compelled to write to a friend at Warm Springs, in the adjoining State of Missouri, to send me an editor from abroad whose instalment at the helm of manifest destiny could have no local significance.

The man he sent me was a frowsy, seedy fellow, named Masthead—­not larger, apparently, than a boy of sixteen years, though it was difficult to say from the outside how much of him was editor and how much cast-off clothing; for in the matter of apparel he had acted upon his favorite professional maxim, and “sunk the individual;” his attire—­eminently eclectic, and in a sense international—­quite overcame him at all points.  However, as my friend had assured me he was “a graduate of one of the largest institutions in his native State,” I took him in and bought a pen for him.  My instructions to him were brief and simple.

“Mr. Masthead,” said I, “it is the policy of the Thundergust first, last, and all the time, in this world and the next, to resent the intrusion of Mr. Jefferson Scandril into politics.”

The first thing the little rascal did was to write a withering leader denouncing Mr. Scandril as a “demagogue, the degradation of whose political opinions was only equaled by the disgustfulness of the family connections of which those opinions were the spawn!”

I hastened to point out to Mr. Masthead that it had never been the policy of the Thundergust to attack the family relations of an offensive candidate, although this was not strictly true.

“I am very sorry,” he replied, running his head up out of his clothes till it towered as much as six inches above the table at which he sat; “no offense, I hope.”

“Oh, none in the world,” said I, as carelessly as I could manage it; “only I don’t think it a legitimate—­that is, an effective, method of attack.”