"How is that?"
"Very good."
"Can you do it?" asked the sleight-of-hand performer, as he rolled a
little red ball between his finger and thumb, pitched it up, caught it
as it came down, half closed his hand and blew into it, opened his hand
and the ball had disappeared.
He picked up another ball, tossed it up, caught it in his mouth,
dropped it into his hand, and it mysteriously disappeared.
The juggler was seated on the ground with a piece of blue cloth spread
out before him, on which were three cups, and five little red wax balls
nearly as large as cranberries.
He continued to toss the wax balls about until they had all
disappeared. We watched him closely, but could not discover where they
had gone. He then arose, took a small portion of my coat sleeve between
his thumb and finger, began rubbing them together, and by and by, one
of the balls appeared between his digits. He picked at a small boy's
ear and got another of the balls. He blew his nose and another dropped
upon the cloth. He slapped the top of his head and one dropped out of
his mouth, and he took the fifth from a boy's hair.
He then changed his method. He placed the cups' mouths down upon the
cloth, and under one of them put the five little balls. When he placed
the cup we watched carefully; there were no balls under it. When he
raised it up, behold, there were the five little balls.
He removed the cups from one place to another, and asked us to guess
which cup the balls were under, but we were always wrong.
There was a large company of us, ranging from children of three to old
men and women of seventy-five, and from Chinese schoolboys to a bishop
of the church, but none of us could discover how he did it.
Later, however, I learned how the trick was performed. As he raised the
cup with his thumb and forefinger, he inserted two other fingers under,
gathered up all the balls between them and placed them under the cup as
he put it down. While in making the balls disappear, he concealed them
either in his mouth or between his fingers.
The Chinese have a saying:
In selecting his balls from north to south,
The magician cannot leave his mouth;
And in rolling his balls, you understand,
He must have them hidden in his hand.
Of quite a different character are the jugglers with plates and bowls.
Not only children, but many of a larger growth delight to watch these.
Our only way of learning about them was to call them into our court as
the Chinese call them to theirs, and that is what we did.
The performer first put a plate on the top of a trident and set it
whirling. In this whirling condition he put the trident on his forehead
where he balanced it, the trident whirling with the plate as though
boring into his skull.
He next took a bamboo pole six feet long, with a nail in the end on
which he set the plate whirling. The plate, of course, had a small
indentation to keep it in its place on the nail. He raised the plate in
the air and inserted into the first pole another of equal length, then
another and still another, which put the plate whirling in the air
thirty feet high.
Thus whirling he balanced it on his hand, on his arm, on his thumb, on
his forehead, and finally in his mouth, after which he tossed the plate
up, threw the pole aside and caught it as it came down. The old manager
standing by received the pole, but as he saw the plate tossed up, he
fell flat upon the earth, screaming lest the plate be broken.
This same performer set a bowl whirling on the end of a chop-stick.
Then tossing the bowl up he caught it inverted on the chop-stick, and
made it whirl as rapidly as possible. In this condition he tossed it up
ten, then fifteen, then twenty or more feet into the air catching it on
the chop-stick as it came down.
He then changed the process. He tossed the bowl a foot high, and struck
it with the other chop-stick one, two, three, four or five times before
it came down, and this he did so rapidly and regularly as to make it
sound almost like music. There is a record of one of the ancient poets
who was able to play a tune with his bowl and chop-sticks after having
finished his meal. He may have done it in this way.
This trick seemed a very difficult performance. It excited the
children, and some of the older persons clapped their hands and
exclaimed, "Very good, very good." But when he tossed it only a foot
high and let go the chop-stick, making it change ends, and catching the
bowl, they were ready for a general applause. In striking the bowl and
thus manipulating his chop-sticks, his hands moved almost as rapidly as
those of an expert pianist.
"Can you toss the knives?" piped up one of the children who had seen a
juggler perform this difficult feat.
The man picked up two large knives about a foot long and began tossing
them with one hand. While this was going on a third knife was handed
him and he kept them going with both hands. At times he threw them
under his leg or behind his back, and at other times pitched them up
twenty feet high, whirling them as rapidly as possible and catching
them by the handles as they came down.
While doing this he passed one of the knives to the attendant who gave
him a bowl, and he kept the bowl and two knives going. Then he gave the
attendant another knife and received a ball, and the knife, the ball
and the bowl together, the ball and bowl at times moving as though the
former were glued to the bottom of the latter.
These were not all the tricks he could perform but they were all he
would perform in addition to his bear show for twelve cents--for this
was the man with the bear--so the children allowed him to go.
Some weeks later they called in a different bear show. This bear was
larger and a better performer, but his tricks were about the same.
The juggler in addition to doing all we have already described
performed also the following tricks.
He first put one end of an iron rod fifteen inches long in his mouth.
On this he placed a small revolving frame three by six inches. He set a
bowl whirling on the end of a bamboo splint fifteen inches long, the
other end of which he rested on one side of the frame, balancing the
whole in his mouth.
While the bowl continued whirling, he took the frame off the rod, stuck
the bamboo in a hole in the frame an inch from the end, resting the
other end of the frame on the rod, brought the bowl over so as to
obtain a centre of gravity and thus balanced it.
He took two small tridents a foot or more in length, put the end of the
handle of one in his mouth, set the bowl whirling on the end of the
handle of the other, rested the middle prong of one on the middle prong
of the other and let it whirl with the bowl. Afterwards he set the
prong of the whirling trident on the edge of the other and let it whirl.
He took two long curved boar's teeth which were fastened on the ends of
two sticks, one a foot long, the other six inches. The one he held in
his mouth, the other having a hole diagonally through the stick, he
inserted a chop-stick making an angle of seventy degrees. He set the
bowl whirling on the end of the chop-stick, rested one tooth on the
other, in the indentation and they whirled like a brace and bit.
Finally he took a spiral wire having a straight point on each end. This
he called a dead dragon. He set the bowl whirling on one end, placing
the other on the small frame already referred to. As the spiral wire
began to turn as though boring, he called it a living dragon. These
feats of balancing excited much wonder and merriment on the part of the
children.
The juggler then took an iron trident with a handle four and a half
feet long and an inch and a half thick, and, pitching it up into the
air, caught it on his right arm as it came down. He allowed it to roll
down his right arm, across his back, and along his left arm, and as he
turned his body he kept the trident rolling around crossing his back
and breast and giving it a new impetus with each arm. The trident had
on it two cymbal-shaped iron plates which kept up a constant rattling.
This showman had with him three boy acrobats whose skill he proceeded
to show.
"Pitch the balls," he said.
The largest of the three boys fastened a cushioned band, on which was a
leather cup, around his head, the cup being on his forehead just
between his eyes.
He took two wooden balls, two and a half inches in diameter, tossed
them in the air twenty feet high, catching them in the cup as they came
down. The shape of the cup was such as to hold the balls by suction
when they fell. He never once missed. This is the most dangerous
looking of all the tricks I have seen jugglers perform.
"Shooting stars," said the showman.
The boy tossed aside his cup and balls and took a string six feet long,
on the two ends of which were fastened wooden balls two and a half
inches in diameter. He set the balls whirling in opposite directions
until they moved so rapidly as to stretch the string, which he then
held in the middle with finger and thumb and by a simple motion of the
hand kept the balls whirling.
He was an expert, and changed the swinging of the balls in as many
different ways as an expert club-swinger could his clubs.
"Boy acrobats," called out the manager, as the manipulator of the
"shooting stars" bowed himself out amid the applause of the children.
The two smaller boys threw off their coats, hitched up their
trousers--always a part of the performance whether necessary or
not--and began the high kick, high jump, handspring, somersault, wagon
wheel, ending with hand-spring, and bending backwards until their heads
touched the ground.
One of them stood on two benches a foot high, put a handkerchief on the
ground, and bending backwards, picked it up with his teeth.
The two boys then clasped each other around the waist, as in the
illustration, and each threw the other back over his head a dozen times
or more.
Exit the bear show with the boy acrobats, enter the old woman juggler
with her husband who beats the gong.
This was one of the most interesting performances I have ever seen in
China, perhaps because so unexpected.
The old woman had small, bound feet. She lay flat on her back, stuck up
her feet, and her husband put a crock a foot in diameter and a foot and
a half deep upon them. She set it rolling on her feet until it whirled
like a cylinder. She tossed it up in such a way as to have it light
bottom side up on her "lillies,"[1] in which position she kept it
whirling. Tossing it once more it came down on the side, and again
tossing it she caught it right side up on her small feet, keeping it
whirling all the time.
My surprise was so great that I gave the old woman ten cents for
performing this single trick.
The tricks of sleight-of-hand performers are well-nigh without number.
Some of them are easily understood,--surprising, however, to
children--and often interesting to grown people, while others are very
clever and not so easily understood.
Instead of the hat from which innumerable small packages are taken, the
Chinese magician had two hollow cylinders, which exactly fit into each
other, that he took out of a box and placed upon a cylindrical chest,
and from these two cylinders--each of which he repeatedly showed us as
being without top or bottom and empty--he took a dinner of a dozen
courses.
He called upon the baker to bring bread, the grocer to bring
vegetables, and after each call he took out of the cylinders the thing
called for. He finally called the wine shop to bring wine, and removing
both cylinders, he exposed to the surprised children a large crock of
wine.
As he brought out dish after dish, the children looked in open-mouthed
wonder, and asked papa, mama or nurse, where he got them all, for they
evidently were not in the cylinders. But papa saw him all the time
manipulating the crock in the cylinder which he did not show, and he
knew that all these things were taken from and then returned to this
crock, while instead of being full of wine, he had only a cup of wine
in a false lid which exactly fitted the mouth of the crock, and made it
seem full.
When he had put away his crock and cylinders, he produced what seemed
to be two empty cups.
He presented them to us to show that they were empty, then putting them
mouth to mouth, and placing them on the ground, he left them a moment,
when with a "presto change," and a wave of the hand, he removed the top
cup and revealed to the astonished children and some of the children of
a larger growth, a cup full of water with two or three little fish or
frogs therein.
On inquiry I was told that he had the under cup covered with a thin
film of water-colored material, and that as he removed the top cup he
removed also the film which left the fish or frogs exposed to view.
This same juggler performed many tricks of producing great dishes of
water from under his garments, the mere enumeration of which, might
prove to be tiresome.
I was walking along the street one day near the mouth of Filial Piety
Lane where a large company of men and children were watching a juggler,
and from the trick I thought it worth while to invite him in for the
amusement of the children. He promised to come about four o clock,
which he did.
He first proceeded to eat a hat full of yellow paper, after which, with
a gag and a little puff, he pulled from his mouth a tube of paper of
the same color five or six yards long.
This was very skillfully performed and for a long time I was not able
to understand how he did it. But after awhile I discovered that with
the last mouthful of paper he put in a small roll, the centre of which
he started by puffing, and this he pulled out in a long tube. He did it
with so many groanings and with such pain in the region of the stomach,
that attention was directed either to his stomach or the roll, and
taken away from his mouth.
"I shall eat these needles," said he, as he held up half a dozen
needles, "and then eat this thread, after which I shall reproduce them."
He did so. He grated his teeth together causing a sound much like that
of breaking needles. He pretended to swallow them, working his tongue
back and forth in his tightly closed mouth, after which he drew forth
the thread on which all the needles were strung.
He had a number of small white bone needles which he stuck into his
nose and pulled out of his eyes, or which he pushed up under his upper
lip and took out of his eyes or vice versa. How he performed the above
trick I was not able to discover. He seemed to put them through the
tear duct, but whether he did or not I cannot say. How he got them from
his mouth to his eyes unless he had punctured a passage beneath the
skin, is still to me a mystery.
His last trick was to swallow a sword fifteen inches long. The sword
was straight with a round point and dull edges. There was no deception
about this. He was an old man and his front, upper teeth were badly
worn away by the constant rasping of the not over-smooth sword. He
simply put it in his mouth, threw back his head and stuck it down his
throat to his stomach.
[1] Small feet of the Chinese woman.