The operations of the men sorcerers in India are quite scientific. They set about their work in a business-like manner, and in sight of the house of their intended victim the mystic caldron begins to boil and bubble. The victim, however, is not to be terrified out of his senses. What are his enemy's fires and incantations to him? He takes no notice, and continues to live on as though there was not a sorcerer in the world. But that smoke: it meets his eye the first object every morning. That ruddy glare: it is the last thing he sees at night. That measured but inarticulate sound: it is never out of his ear. His thoughts dwell on the mystical business. He is preoccupied, even in company. He wonders what they are putting into the pot, and if it has any connection with the spasm that has just shot through him. He becomes nervous; he feels sick; he cannot sleep from thinking; he cannot eat for that horrid broth that bubbles forever in his mind. He gets worse and worse, and dies! But this empire of the imagination is beaten in Java, where it is supposed that a housebreaker, by throwing a handful of earth upon the beds of the inmates, completely incapacitates them from moving to save their property. The man who is to be robbed, on feeling the earth fall upon him, lies as motionless as if bound hand and foot. He is under a spell, which he feels unable to break.