Into this World and Why

by A. Victor Segno

Author A. Victor Segno (b. 1870) was an American mentalist who was internationally known in the early twentieth century. Segno arrived in Los Angeles in the early 1900s and flourished during a craze for self-improvement, writing books such as The Law of Mentalism, How to Live 100 Years and Personal Magnetism, as well as pamphlets such as 'How to Have Beautiful Hair' and 'How to Be Happy Tho' Married.' Claiming his brain waves served as 'treatments for the cure of non-success,' he charged $1 a month - about $25 in today's money - to 'Success Club' members, and by 1903 was bringing in $12,000 a month. Segno was investigated by local postal authorities, who noted that he received the most mail of any single individual in the state of California - and sent as many as 7,000 letters a day, which included information about the Segno Success Club and such items as his Segnogram newsletter and various other publications. By 1904, Segno had made enough money to build an eccentric concrete castle with a roof garden and a dome on Belmont Avenue in the Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, a place he called Inspiration Point that served as his residence and the headquarters of the American Institute of Mentalism. The brain waves actually brought him so much money that in 1911, he embarked on a trip to establish a similar school in Russia. At least that's what he told his wife, Annie. It turned out that the author of How to Be Happy Tho' Married had left her for another woman - his former secretary. The next year, Segno set up a similar scheme in Berlin, occupying a suite of rooms on one of the city's most fashionable boulevards. 'He has a small army of assistants dispatching mental waves and opening letters containing checks, money orders and inquiries,' the Los Angeles Times reported. But as World War I engulfed Europe, Segno returned to Los Angeles and then vanished, with no records found on Segno after this point.

63 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1929