really know one? well, i should say so—better than i know any one else alive. no, it was not herrmann, nor signor blitz before him; though each in turn seemed to my young eyes the most marvelous conjurer possible, and the latter remained for years a haunting wonder. but i was already getting acquainted with a magician to whom both of these put together were a fool. for that matter, we had always been neighbors; but for years i never really knew him well, nor was even aware that he was in the conjuring business at all. had we boys realized that we were growing up next door to the greatest living prestidigitator, he doubtless would have got a little more attention from us; but he was very quiet, and not at all given to “showing off;” and, to tell the truth, we left him pretty much to himself. even in our games he was hardly ever asked to take part; though i can see now where he could[242] have given us a good many points on three-old-cat and follow-my-leader, or any of our other sports. it makes one feel cheap to find that one has been living so long next door to such a genius without ever getting on intimate terms with him, or fairly discovering who he is. it was not his fault, either, for there was never anything stuck up about him, despite his wonderful gifts. with some people, it is true, he never was known to associate; but that was merely because he did not push himself. to any one who gave him to understand that his company was agreeable he was always cordial. that i call downright obliging in one who has got so high up in the world—for he is known and respected everywhere, and has been invited to appear before kings and queens when even their prime ministers were shut out. you see, he has been a great traveler. perhaps there is not a place in the whole world that he does not know. but, then, it’s easy to travel when one has plenty of means and leisure, and a free pass everywhere. possibly he would not get around quite so much if he had to pay fare.
though it took us so long to get acquainted, we rather “cottoned to” one another after the ice was broken, and for the[243] last twenty years have been great chums. in that time we have knocked about the world a good bit together. really, i mean, not like our first travel. in the younger days he used to drop in on me every now and then with a serious air, and remark:
“say, want to go to shanghai this evening? well, shut your eyes. presto! change! here we are! now, come around, and we’ll see the sights.”
and there we were in shanghai, using our eyes and holding our noses. but all that, you understand, was one of his sleight-of-hand tricks. it was very pleasant and inexpensive travel, and i learned a good deal from it; but the grind of it was that i could not bring back any of the wonderful things we saw in the bazars. i’d just about as soon not travel as to be unable to collect trophies from the country i am visiting. it was really not his fault, of course. he is the most accommodating fellow in the world; but even jugglery has its limits; and after a friend has given you a trip to any part of the world you choose, and brought you back safe and sound, and paid all your expenses out of his own pocket, no well bred guest could have the face to ask him to bring also a cargo of all sorts of truck. when i used to groan at coming[244] away empty-handed, he would say frankly: “sorry my boy, but it really can’t be helped. i’m glad to take you anywhere, and make it as pleasant for you as i can; but my pass is for passengers only, and the baggage business is strictly prohibited. it is too bulky; and then think what trouble i should get into with the customs officers if we went to bringing in such cargoes outside the regular channels.”
in later years we have pretty thoroughly made up for that aggravation; for nowadays i am the host, and wouldn’t think of starting on a journey without inviting him to come along; and we bring back all sorts of interesting plunder from everywhere, until the house we occupy together looks more like a museum than anything else. he himself admits that it’s a good deal ahead of the old way; but even the delight of collecting—and no boy or man half knows what life is until he “collects” something, and earnestly—even that pleasure would not compensate me for the loss of his company. he is the very best traveling companion i ever found; so ready to do whatever you wish, so full of information, so helpful in emergencies of any sort. some people who have traveled with him have tried to tell me that he cowardly deserted[245] them in time of danger; but there must be two sides to this story, for i have seen him in a great many tight pinches, and he was clear-headed and quick as a wink to do the right thing. to tell the truth, he has saved my life a score of times, all by his dexterity; so you may be sure that when people talk of his running away and leaving them in the lurch, i resent the imputation, and conclude they were the ones really to blame. in knocking about the frontiers i have found a good many men, of several different colors, who make you feel, “well, if it came to a fight for life, with my back against a rock, that would be a good fellow to have beside me.” but among all those brave men—all of whom i admire, and some of whom i love—i would rather have him by me, in a pinch, than any other one.
you must not think from this that my friend is a desperado, or a professional fighter, or anything of the sort. on the contrary, his disposition is as peaceful as his habits are quiet, and he hates any sort of a row. it is only in the crises which any man may meet, and every man must sometimes meet who travels outside the beaten tracks, when it is necessary and manful to fight, that he suddenly turns combative and[246] pitches in. ordinarily, he is a plain, practical business man, who, for his own part, might have retired long ago, but remains in the firm for the sake of the junior partners. he works harder than any of them—and then, when business hours are over, diverts himself and his friends by little exhibitions of his matchless skill as a conjurer. at such times he likes to forget work and worry altogether, and to be jolly and free of care and full of pranks as a boy. i have seen people so inconsiderate as to insist on boring him by “talking shop” out of office hours, but he always resents it. he is rather nervous and very impressionable, apt to fall into the mood of those who are with him; and he sometimes gets so tired and confused as to show very little of his usual wisdom. indeed, i have seen him, when very weary, make a flat failure of some trick at magic, which ordinarily he could do with astounding cleverness.
undoubtedly his greatest claim to public respect is in the quiet, every-day wisdom of his practical career; but his gifts as a magician are so brilliant and so fascinating that one naturally thinks of them first. and, in spite of his long business training, there isn’t a mercenary streak in him. some of his most wonderful performances[247] are given gratis, and he even seems to prefer an audience of one to what the managers would call “a paying house.”
eh? you would like to know what he can do that is so much bigger than the tricks of the wizards that get their $200 a night? well, if i were to tell you all i’ve seen him do, we wouldn’t be done this side of 1900; but here are some few things, and if you do not admit that herrmann and all the rest are mere greenhorns to him, i’ll agree never to go near another of his performances.
i never knew him to fry eggs in a stove-pipe hat, nor to pick twenty-dollar gold pieces out of people’s eyes, nor to chop off a man’s head and then stick it on again, nor any of those threadbare sensations, though he sometimes practices simple illusions like making things appear where they are not, or causing them to seem not to be where you really know they are. but those are trifles, just to keep his hand in; his claim as champion conjurer of the world rests on very different accomplishments. for instance, one of his favorite tricks is to take a careless fly-away boy and turn him into a strong, wise man—turn him “for keeps,” too. i’ve seen him do that a hundred times, and you will agree that that is[248] a very useful trick, as well as a very difficult one. when one sees how smoothly he does it, one is doubly sorry that he doesn’t get all the boys up on the stage and experiment on them; but, of course, a complete change of personality is a serious thing, and he would not be justified in taking any such liberties without the full consent of the subject.
an almost equally remarkable trick, and one he is equally fond of, is to take a thoroughly homely girl and put a brand-new face on her. not exactly a beautiful face, for he says that is none of his business, but a face that every one likes to look at. yet i know girls so foolish as to decline treatment by this great specialist, and to think cosmetics better.
my friend’s hobby for experimenting upon young people, and his innate fondness for them, as shown by his patience with their frequently slighting treatment of him, made me remark one evening: “how is it you are so good-natured with these rattleheads? nobody else would have the patience. even when a fellow has snubbed you in the most discourteous way you seem to bear no grudge, but to be always ready to do him a good turn if there is a chance.”
“well,” said my friend, slowly, dropping[249] a new sleight-of-hand he was practicing, “you see, i was once young and a fool myself, and had to grow and develop; and the process was so tedious that i’m not apt to forget. and, somehow, i feel as if i should always keep young in spite of the years. there is always something to interest me, and that keeps me from growing old.”
“by the way,” i put in, “when did you begin conjuring? such marvelous proficiency as yours can have been attained only by lifelong practice. did you take it up deliberately, or drift into it by chance?”
my friend gazed soberly for a moment at the crackling cedar sticks in my adobe fireplace—he had come out to visit me in new mexico—before replying.
“do you know, this reminds me very strongly of my own early life. these indians who are your neighbors, this simple way of life, recall old times. you might not believe it, but my own folks were nomad savages, and my infancy was passed among scenes compared to which your surroundings here are highly civilized. yes, i don’t wonder you are astonished; in sober earnest, you cannot imagine how brutal and squalid were the surroundings. nothing to wear, very little to eat, and that little always raw; in fact, not one of the conveniences[250] which even an indian now deems necessary to his existence. why, we hadn’t even a way to warm ourselves; and as for houses or clothing, they were quite unknown. education? not a bit more than the monkeys have. i was nearly a grown man before i learned to read and write.”
“why, you have risen even further than from rail splitter to president!”
“ah, lincoln got as high as man can get. we were very dear friends, and i believe i helped him materially in the great crises through which he was called upon to lead the nation. at any rate, he always consulted me before taking any important step.”
now in any one else, this would have seemed the end of impudence and mendacity, if not half blasphemy. but when my friend the magician said it, i knew it must be true. he went on in his quiet way:
“but we were talking of my youth. you asked how and when i first took up conjuring. to tell the truth, i can hardly remember. i was certainly very young, and the discovery of my powers was quite accidental. one of my first tricks was very simple; but perhaps it was most important of all. it lifted my people from a lower plane than any savage now occupies, to high[251] civilization. every person every day uses that little invention of mine—and 99 per cent of them without stopping to thank the inventor. by simply taking two sticks and rubbing them together—this way—i produced a substance which had never been seen on earth before, but which is now the first absolute necessity in every household. if it were abolished, the world’s progress would stop. it’s a very curious substance. the materials of which it is composed are invisible and intangible; but it can be seen further and felt more than anything else in the world. you can’t touch it; and yet, here, if you could not sometimes almost touch it you would perish. you have to feed it as carefully as you would a horse, and much oftener; and, unlike any other laborer i know of, it will never work between meals. but while it eats, it will work like mad. another queer thing about it is that it would live forever if you fed it forever; but it dies as soon as it stops eating. but you can bring it to life again in a minute, strong and active as ever. it is terribly mischievous, too; if you give it proper attention, it cuts up no pranks; but if you are careless, it sometimes sneaks off and does more damage in one short romp than a hundred men could replace by a lifetime’s earnings. then it’s[252] curious what a hatred it has for a still commoner substance which i didn’t invent. bring the two together and there is a noisy and desperate fight, and one or other of the combatants is annihilated. yet if you place them just near enough to each other, but so confined that they cannot grapple, they work together with an energy which i saw move a hundred buildings once—each building over thirty feet long. ah, you wonder more at some of my other tricks, probably because you are less familiar with them; but i tell you that is just about the biggest single thing i ever did. there would have been neither geography nor history; we should never have heard of c?sar or napoleon or washington or much of anybody else, if i hadn’t stumbled on that little secret of rubbing the sticks, while i was still what you might well call a green, awkward boy.”
“yes,” i admitted, “i guess, after all, your fire trick is about the greatest thing of all—though i hadn’t just looked at it in that light before. really, about every single thing we depend on depends on that. and that was about your first turn in magic?”
“ye-es, perhaps the first important one. it was a great start, too, for after that i advanced[253] pretty rapidly in proficiency, until i became, as you know, able to do pretty nearly whatever i try.”
that is not putting it too strongly—he can do almost anything he seriously turns his hand to. after what i have seen him accomplish, there are few things i would deem it hopeless for him to attempt. our stage magicians are at their wits’ end to devise some new trick; but he invents a thousand a day—the poorest more wonderful than their masterpiece. now there’s his own life preserver, for instance—a ridiculous little affair in something like thirty pieces; the simplest thing, yet of almost infinite uses. it is, among many other remarkable qualities, the greatest preservative known. an article so ephemeral that a breath of air would whisk it away, so perishable that not all the arctic ice could save it, can by this means be kept a thousand years—aye, or ten thousand, for that matter—as good as new. yes, a man’s very speech may become visible and eternal—all because my friend once did a little conjuring for a greek, who raised most remarkable harvests from seed our florists never handle. i don’t know just where it does come from nowadays—for we still see that sort of crop once in a while. perhaps[254] cadmus himself was a politician, and the dragon’s teeth are an heirloom in the family.
those early conjurings are not more astounding than the new ones he is constantly devising. nowadays he can sit down in washington or london or berlin, and, by a few taps on a table, turn a million men into a machine for destruction. he will take your ear in new york and hold it to the lips of your friend in chicago, and then make it as easy for the chicagoan to hear what you say in reply. your voice, which, so far as any ability of yours goes, is lost forever as soon as spilled, he can bottle up so perfectly that your great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren shall listen to what you said two hundred years before they were born, and hear it in your very tones. you see, my friend is making life a good deal larger, and death a good deal smaller—and he is not done yet!
but i should be. there is simply no use trying to enumerate his magic, for it has no end. besides, you can get a much better notion of his powers by watching him than thus at second hand from me. but how are you going to find him, when he doesn’t advertise? why, of course! how stupid of me to have forgotten to tell you that his name is—thought.
