about which was neither falsehood nor audacious
pretence of communication with the dead.

Here is a glass of plain water, perfectly clear,
limpid, colourless; hold it up to the light— you
see nothing whatever but an innocent glass of
spring water, without even an animalcule floating
unconscious in the midst. Strike into it a
glass rod or an iron tube. In a moment the plain
water flashes out into innumerable crystals, and
the glass is filled with brilliant prismatic spicula,
glancing back all the colours of the rainbow.
That is magic, if you like; natural magic; which
is better than human. Another glass of pure
water fresh from the spring— breathe on it
gently, and it is no longer clear and pure but
milky and turbid; another bit of nature's
juggling very useful in its way. Do you see this
piece of ice? Here, I press something down on
it with my penknife; the ice bursts into flames,
and the flames lick up the drops as they run.
Again, I bring a lighted match to the surface of
this block of Wenham, and there is at once an
unmistakable bonfire, which burns until I put it
out. I have another tumbler of quite clear water
here. Gently I slip an egg into the tumbler, then
raise my hand when it has slipped down mid-
way, and bid it stop and float; it does stop, and
it does float; and I hold up before my audience
the admirable spectacle of an egg
suspended in the water without hook, cord, magnet,
or any other visible agent whatsoever. Why
not? If my will can go into chairs and tables
and make them walk and talk, why not into
an egg to arrest its downward career? I have
a slender-necked jar or bottle, bulbous in the
body, contracted in the throat, yet comfortably
located in that bulbous body is another egg,
whole, sound, unbroken, but of such dimensions
as could never possibly have passed through
the neck. Yet it did. The bottle was not made
over the egg, and the egg was got through a
passage a full inch too small for it. How?
Eggs are brittle things, and, so far as I know,
not compressible: yet this mystery of the egg
and the bulbous narrow-necked jar is true.
I can light my candles by only pointing at them
with a glass rod; I can pour a bucketful of
water onto a heap of sand, and bring up the sand
as dry as if I had taken it off Hampstead Heath
on a windy day in March— a trick, by the way,
made great use of by the Hindù jugglers, and
also of life or death value in the ordeals of that
enlightened people: the priests having the
privilege of manipulating the sand. I can freeze
water in a red-hot vessel standing close by
the fire; I can dip my hand into water, and
bring it out again as dry as if just wiped
with a Baden towel— another Hindù trick
known to the West. I can pour water on to a
sheet of paper, and instead of wetting the paper,
it shall run about in little balls like crazy quick-
silver. A dead twig or a branch of summer
beauty, green and leafy, I can fumigate with a
little sweet-scented incense, and in a short time
bring it you again white and sparkling with the
crystallisation of hoar-frost. By merely shaking
an uncorked bottle of oil, I can produce the
loveliest moonlight effects of light— very like the
luminous hands in present vogue. I can walk
on hot metal plates, if you give me time beforehand
for the preparation of my feet; and I, and
M. de Boutigny, and some others, can boldly
plunge our naked arms into glowing vats of
fiercely boiling metal, which only feels to us like
liquid velvet. All this I can do, by the aid and
teaching of natural magic, and without any help
from the " dear spirits." But I can do much
more than this: as you will see if you go on.

Even so long ago as Chaucer's time, when I
was a joculator or jougglour, I was an adept in
the art of sleight of hand. I could cut off a boy's
head as he lay on a table, and you should see the
blood on the platter, and the livid hue of death
on the face, as the jaws gaped and chattered
in the last throes: when, with a " presto! pass!
hey cockalorum fizgig!" I could put it on again,
and the grinning jackanapes be none the worse;
I could thimblerig as well as the best of the
modern professors on Ascot Heath, pass
cards at my will, and make the ace of hearts
a live pigeon; I could make an egg dance
a hornpipe indifferently well; I could change
a groat into a tester, and a tester into a
noble, if I had such a thing about me: yet
somehow I never got the richer for the
transformation. I could tie innumerable knots in a
handkerchief, or you could tie them yourself, or
as many of you as chose; but at the word of
command they should all unloose themselves and
fall out. I could give you ale or beer, sherris
or sack, all out of the same barrel, and in larger
quantity than the said barrel would hold without
jugglery intervening— so Master Houdin's trick
of the inexhaustible bottle, clever as it was, had
its forerunners. I could cut off my nose; thrust
a padlock through my cheek and turn the key
upon myself to show you it was all right, and no
deception, my masters. I could eat fire, and
breathe it out again; swallow knives, pull a
rope through my nose, and draw countless yards
of ribbon out of my mouth. I could swallow a
tin pudding, a yard long; make three bells come
where you could all see for yourselves were only
two before, and no possibility of a third; I
could make a card vanish and turn up
unexpectedly in another place; I could juggle you
many a pretty picture beyond all chance for any
of your duller wits to understand how. Could
you tell me how I brought into my lord's hall,
that water— seemingly fair living water— in
which were boats with men rowing up and down?
Or how I conjured up the show or presence of
that grim lion? and of that ample field with
posies growing rich and lush among the grass?
How did I make the vine grow up in a moment,
bearing white and red grapes, real to the touch
and sweet to the taste? How did I build you a
goodly castle with actual stone, and at a word
make all disappear as swiftly as it had come?

A " learned clerk," a friend of mine, to amuse
his company, made a "forest full of wild deer,
where might be seen a hundred of them slain,
some with hounds and some with arrows; then
the hunting being finished, he caused a company