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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Cæsar 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 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 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.
The Silver Omelet.
[Illustration: THE PATIO PROCESS AT GUANAJUATO]
The Silver Omelet.
Doubtless you should not be blamed for a sniff of incredulity when I come
to mention the size of it, though you certainly have not made as many
omelets as I did in the years of keeping house on the frontier “all by my
lonesome,” and though you probably could not turn one now by flapping it
to within six inches of the ceiling and catching it, t’other side up, in
the frying pan, as every fit frontiersman should. But blink as you will,
it is a solemn truth that we are now sitting down to an omelet two feet
and a half thick and a little matter of one hundred and ten feet across!
And worth more than all the food your whole household could eat in a
generation.
The worst of it was that the _chef_ was away. Don Ygnacio, who had served
up these gigantic dishes for thirty years, and had the knack of them, was
to-day in Dolores; and in charge of the range was a fuzzy-faced lad of
eighteen who had never turned a Guanajuato omelet in his life.
Guanajuato, you must know, is one of the oldest and richest silver-mining
districts in the world. Founded over three hundred and fifty years ago,
this picturesque Mexican city has produced more than a billion dollars
in bullion, and not tired yet. In 1527 a Spanish miner invented in
Mexico the cheapest and simplest method yet known for reducing silver
ores—the so called “patio process”—by which the great bulk of the silver
of Mexico and Peru has been extracted for so many centuries. To this day
the haciendas for patio reduction are among the most interesting features
of the great silver camps of Spanish America. Each hacienda is a little
walled city—with its strong ramparts, and corner towers loop-holed for
muskets; its huge sheds for the primitive ore-grinding; its pleasant
offices and home for the _administrador_; its quarters for employes; its
stables for hundreds of mules; and its enormous stone skillets wherein
the hugest omelets in the world are “cooked.”
_Torta_ in Spanish America is the usual word for omelet. It is literally
a “cake,” and “of eggs” is implied. But the miners use it specifically
for the omelet of wet-ground ore seasoned with the necessary chemicals
to assemble the silver. In looks it is simply a stupendous mud pie.
In the hacienda of the Cypresses one of these omelets was even now
cooking. Patient burro caravans had packed down from the wonderful old
bonanza mine of the Valenciana enough _cargas_ of that broken gray rock
to make forty-six “heaps” of 3200 pounds each. The ore had been fed
to the great trundling _molina_, whose ponderous, upright, iron-bound
wheel grudgingly followed the straining mules round and round its pivot,
crunching the rock finer and finer, till the particles sifted through
the screen to the bins below. Thence it had been shoveled into the
wet-grinding _arrastras_—thirty big stone tubs, around which the mules
circled with their “whims,” dragging granite blocks which scrubbed the
wet gravel into fine paste. Then the mud went to the great _cajete_
(tank), where the surplus water was “wept away,” as they say; and finally
to the stone-walled, stone-paved patio, to become a torta.
Almost anyone with eyes could crush rock, dry or wet; but when it came to
sampling that precious mud, deciding precisely how much silver it carried
to the ton and how refractory it was, and therefore just how much salt
and just how much mercury must be put in for seasoning, why, then was no
time for a greenhorn. Fifty thousand dollars is no joke, any way you look
at it; and when you come to hunting for $50,000 by the invisible atom in
a hundred and fifty tons of mud, it is as serious as anything well can be.
But Don Ygnacio had had to go, and with four of the trustiest servants,
all armed; for in those days, a generation ago, the brigands were a fear
on every highway of Mexico. And there was no one to leave in charge
except Alberto, his nephew.
Luckily there had been time to set a recipe for the torta just turned
into the pan. “So much salt and so much _azogue_,”[41] said Don Ygnacio;
“that, I think, will suit. But watch it well; and if not, season it by
the formula. Care, then, and much luck!”
Every day of the seventeen since then, Alberto had paced the flagging by
the patio, and the passages of the great sheds where dry mill and wet
mill were chewing their noisy mouthfuls for a new torta, now and again
turning his eye covertly to the last room on the administrador’s porch,
behind whose heavy door he had heaped the forty-pound bars of massy
silver from the last omelet. The washing and concentration and smelting
he had superintended without much difficulty, and had seen that $49,000
worth of metal safely stored.
So far as the present torta went, his assays indicated that Don Ygnacio’s
hasty estimate had been precisely right. But he certainly hoped the old
manager would be back in time to decide if the usual eighteen days had
been enough “cooking”—and, doubly, to fix the seasoning for the next
omelet. And in all, it was a heavy responsibility for a boy who had
studied a hundred tortas, but never been charged with one before; and
it was to be noticed that his shoulders were not quite so miraculously
square as on the first day, nor his chest so thick, now that he came down
from the arrastras to the patio.
In this quarter-acre mud omelet the beating and the cooking went on
together. A score of barelegged men and grown boys waded thigh-deep in
the mess, driving their mules (blindfolded, poor beasts, to protect their
eyes), and holding down the drag-boards, to mix the mercury and its prey.
It was close to noon. In five minutes the wading mules would be done with
their exhausting day’s work of six hours. Alberto walked down toward the
well-tower beside the patio, and something drew his eyes to an overgrown
lad slouching behind one white mule at the edge of the mud. Poor dullard!
It was one thing to wade in mud at eighteen cents a day, and quite
another to manage mud which was worth a comfortable year’s salary per ton.
“S-s-t!”
Alberto started. Surely it could not be! Well, it _was_! This
perambulating mudlark was actually “s-s-t”-ing to him!
“Care!” whispered the Indian lad, as Alberto came alongside the stone
curb. He looked only at his mule, hauling at the tired beast and scolding
it for some imaginary offence, and between his objurgations dropping
whispered “asides.”
“_Arre_, ill-said brute! (_Young Excellency, the bandits!_) For how long
must I enshow thee to walk well? (_And some of those in the hacienda!_)
Miserable! For what is the rein? (_They are making to rob—to-night!_)
_Arre_, lazy-bones!”
The stolid face had not once changed; and now that another driver
approached, he went sus-ushing off through the mud with never a sidelong
glance.
Alberto felt himself grown suddenly pale; but he was no fool. He glanced
at the intruder. It was a new man from the country—a tall, powerful
fellow with a huge scar on his cheek, shifty eyes, and a beak which had
already earned him the nickname of Narigudo—“Big Nose.” He in turn sent
a sly, sharp look first at the young Indian ahead, then at the young
manager. The latter was already walking quietly toward the well-house.
The silver bell in the old belfry clanged noon. The waders, of two legs
and four, clambered out from the mud. In a moment blindfolds and harness
lay on the flagging, and the mules, suddenly optimistic, went braying and
scampering out through the great gate to bathe and drink by the highway
in the little stream which has carried more precious burdens, doubtless,
than any other brook on earth.[42] A moment later there was a more
deafening clatter, as the hundred mules from the mills came gallopading
down the flags in a very avalanche. _They_ would have to work six hours
more; but they knew the noon hour. Resistless as a charge of cavalry,
they swept around the corners and out of the gate in a jam which seemed
sure to kill some of them.
Alberto had laughed a thousand times at this daily avalanche; but now
he saw it with far-off eyes. He dipped his hand in a bucket of the
pump-wheel and bathed his head, wherein a thousand or more little
prickles snapped. It was enough to make anyone’s brain crackle—robbers
all about, accomplices in the hacienda itself, nearly fifty thousand
dollars in the room at the head of the corridor, and he alone!
This boy had been carefully reared. He was unused to danger and to
responsibility; and now he was fearfully scared. And yet—well, he had
inherited something from the men who conquered that wilderness so many
centuries ago.
In five minutes the young _administrador_ was making his rounds as usual,
now and then stopping to pick up a sample of ore and examine it with
great apparent interest. Among the groups of laborers he passed at lunch
he felt, with a little shiver, that some eyes were on him even more
sharply than they are always on the _administrador’s_ back; but outwardly
he gave no sign, as he figured away at very much the toughest problem he
had ever dreamed of.