That the sleepers in the Potter's Field very often had not even that shelter of tombstones makes their stories the more elusive and the more melancholy.

One or two slight records stand out among the rest, notably the curious one attached to the last of the stones to be removed from Washington Square.

I believe that it was in 1857 that Dr.
John Francis, in an address before the Historical Society of New York, told this odd story, which must here be only touched upon.
One Benjamin Perkins, "a charlatan believer in mesmeric influence," plied his trade in early Manhattan.

He seems to have belonged to that vast army of persons who seriously believe their own teachings even when they know them to be preposterous.

Perkins made a specialty of yellow fever, and insisted that he could cure it by hypnotism.