625 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

ALEXANDER WHISTELO. 593

Doctor Mitchill observed a full-grown man in the very act of metamorphosis, a sight that one would think could not be influenced at that stage by any affection of his mother to change his color. This fact remains to be accounted for on some newer principle. I once knew a Mr. Perey, a composer and singing master who taught in my family. In the fullness of his heart, he confessed one day that he had been credulous enough to throw away a guinea per visit for several months to a quack who called himself an ancient magnetist. This quack undertook, by gestures and grimaces, to remove a purple stain from the cheek of a favorite pupil. At the beginning of the course of magnetism, all parents, relatives, and neighbors praised the quack, believing they saw the mark disappearing from the edge of the lower eyelash. However, they were eventually convinced that they had been deceived.

Some time ago in New York, a horse was exhibited as a wonder. It passed well enough because its tail was shaved and its buttocks painted dapple green. It is the easiest thing in life to create a wonder.

The last question I took the liberty of asking Doctor Mitchill was to come to a just estimate of what he conceives the line of probability to be. I asked whether the fact, which we have on scriptural authority, of the changes worked upon Laban’s sheep by Jacob's contrivance, should be considered a miracle or, based on the principles of maternal affection, a phenomenon within the ordinary laws of nature. The learned witness answered without hesitation that it was to be accounted for by the ordinary laws of nature. Seeing that this is so, and that in matters of generation the resemblance is so perfect between man and beast, I wonder why it has not long ago been used for the embellishment of the human species. Ladies might then attend balls, and Indians go to war without paint; it would be an innocent pleasure to variegate boys and girls by means of colored sticks, feathers, and ribbons. The Dutch might display their taste on their children as they now do on their tulips. How pretty and pleasant it would be to see little natural adornments.