The Daytona Daily News

A Mind
Reading Craze
By MARTHA V. MONROE

A mind reader had come to town and had given some astonishing public exhibitions. But this had not the effect on the beau monde of an exhibition he gave at the house of Mrs. MacGruder, one of society's leaders. This private entertainment made him fashionable, and every young man who had shaken his brains down into his heels at cotillion parties and every young girl whose aristocratic manners and conserved beauty had given her the right to look down on her sisters who had the brains to take down the dictation of a scientific constructor or a merchant prince was talking about mind reading.

Pete Barnical and Lucy Witridge were sitting together, she on a sofa, he in a chair opposite her. He was holding a skein of yarn in his hands which she was winding into a ball.

"I have heard," said Miss Witridge, "that Mrs. Powelton is very much displeased that Mrs. MacGruder got ahead of her by giving that mind reading exhibition at her house. You see, all society is talking about it. Of course it is greatly to Mrs. MacGruder's credit to have introduced the matter."

"Did the mind reader find out who had the most mind?"

"I don't think that was his object. He told what people were thinking about."

"What were they thinking about?"

What a question! It wasn't that which was wonderful; it was that he could tell without knowing what they were thinking about.

"How could he tell what he didn't know?"

She lifted her big brown liquid eyes from a tangle in the yarn she was straightening out to his with a kind of puzzled wonder.

"I didn't mean to say," she replied when she had given her brain time to work out an answer, "that he could tell what a person was thinking about without knowing it, but he didn't know it until—until—"

"He found it out," supplied Pete.

"No, not that either. The remarkable feature of his performance was the way he found it out."

"How did he do it?"

"How did he do it? Why, he did it by—" She was stalled again.

"Perhaps he didn't know himself."

That's it. He said he didn't know how he did it.

"What did he do?"

"He took Billy Perkins' hand and blindfolded, led Billy to what he was thinking about. Then Mr. Horton wrote something on a piece of paper, folded it, put it in an envelope, put the envelope in a book, put the book on the top of the library, and then the—"

"Where did he put the library?"

The library! He didn't put that anywhere. It was there already.

"Well, then what happened?"

"The mind reader told what was written on the paper, though he had been blindfolded all the time."

"That's nothing remarkable. I'll bet I can tell what you're thinking about this minute."

"I don't believe you can do any such thing."

"Try me. Think of something, and I'll tell you what it is."

"Very well; I've thought of something."

"A pumpkin."

There was contempt in her expression as she looked at him and replied that she wasn't thinking of any such thing.

"Yes, you were. You were thinking of Tom Baxter. You couldn't think of Tom Baxter without thinking of Tom Baxter's head. Tom Baxter's head is a pumpkin!"

"How ridiculous!" But she did not smile. Indeed, she made the exclamation because she didn't quite grasp the logical conclusion.

"I'll tell you what you do," he proceeded, not giving her time to think it all out. "You fix your mind on some thing and I'll lead you to it."

She spent some time selecting an object, then told him she was ready. He took her hand and led her to the piano.

"I didn't think of that at all," she said.

"I'll try again," he said, still holding her hand, and he led her to a clock on the mantel.

"Wrong again."

He led her to a tete-a-tete in the center of the room. She didn't say whether he was right or not, nor did he ask her. They sank into their respective seats on the tete-a-tete. He still held her hand.

"I can tell you what you are thinking about," he said.

"What?"

"Tom Baxter."

"I'm not."

"Me."

She did not reply to this. She lowered her eyes.

"And I can tell you," he went on, "what you think I'm thinking about."

"What?"

"You're thinking that I'm thinking that I—that I love you."

There was a great deal more of this intellectual conversation, but at this point it became what the world has heard very often, though it is a question if it tires persons. The mind reader had at least given a young man a reasonable excuse to propose.

But why he went so far out of his way to tell a simple truth that she wanted to hear only persons endowed with sentiment know, and they can't tell.