Juggling

“ Probably the magician is never wholly an impostor, and frequently has a whole-hearted belief in himself; in this connexion may be noted the fact that juggling tricks have in all ages been passed off as magical; the name of “conjuring” (q.v.) survives in our own day, though the conjurer no longer claims that his mysterious results are produced by demons. ”

“ And if by chance any one, who has been under these jugglers’ hands, recovers, they do not fail to ascribe it to the virtue of their juggling tricks. At times they use this way of curing the sick; they lay him upon his back, and tie a ribbon, or a string, round his head, having a stick fastened to the other end of the string, with which they lift up the sick person’s head from the ground, and let it down again ”

“ For all the art of the juggler, he could show naught of magic more unnatural, more ghastly, than the face of the lime-burner as it appeared through the medium of the heated air arising from the primitive kiln,—protean, distorted by every current of the night’s breath,—although it was of much significance to him, and later he came to know it well to his cost. ”

“ As of late he had fallen into the habit, with the opportunity afforded at meal-times, of contemplating her with swift and furtive glances, more than once their eyes met, to the visible embarrassment of both; the juggler, to his astonishment, coloring furiously as might any country boy, and a touch of surprise and almost inquiry becoming visible in the eyes of Euphemia. Strange that so poor and primitive a contrivance as a pallid tallow dip could set such stars of radiant beauty in those long-lashed pensive orbs. ”

“ As for pulling ribbons out of your mouth, it is somewhat a stale jest, whereby jugglers get money from maids by selling laces by the yard, putting into their mouth one round bottom as fast as they pull out another, and at the exact end of every yard they tie a knot so as the same rests upon their teeth, they then cut off the same, and to the beholders are double and treble deceived, seeing as much lace as will fill a hat, and the name of what colour you list; to be drawn so by even yards out of your mouth, and yet the juggler to talk as though there were nothing in his mouth. ”

“ But although he had had his spiritual sufferings of denial, and floutings, and painful patience, and hope that played the juggler with despair, he had anticipated no ordeal like this. He looked in her eyes for some token of relenting, his own full of tears above the hardly quenched brightness of his fervor of faith, a quiver on his lips.
Her face was set and stern. With a realization how deeply the fantasy had struck roots in his [184] nature, she perceived that she must needs share it or flee it. ”

“ And it was exciting for the children, as you may easily guess.
The first act was the juggler, or the "jiggler," as one of the boys had called him. He placed a pole on his chin, and on top of the pole a glass of water. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For instance:—The juggler, giving one of the spectators a coin to hold as securely as possible within his hands, after pronouncing incantations in a monotonous voice for some minutes, suddenly stops, still keeping his seat, makes a rapid motion with his right hand, as if in the act of throwing something at the person holding the coin, at the same time breathing with his mouth upon him. ”

“ Unfortunately, it was at the moment that the young man’s hands, grasping the persimmon shoot near the base, drew it forth from the earth with a wrench, so firmly was it planted, and showed to the discerning bucolic gaze the fully developed root with the earth adhering to its fibres; thus proving by the eyesight of the audience, beyond all power of gainsaying, that it had sprouted from the seed and grown two feet high while this juggler—this limb of Satan—had sung his little song about his Pretty Jane.
A man rarely has to contend with an excess of faith in him and his deeds. ”

“ In the midst of the clamor of denial of any greater possible proficiency, from the two old people, [208] who had not heard the juggler’s reading during the afternoon, she involuntarily cast upon him so appealing, so disarming a glance that for once he was ashamed to even secretly laugh at them.
“If it’s erudition that goes,” he said afterward, lighting his pipe under the stars and finding the grace to laugh instead at himself, “I am the learned man to suit the occasion.” ”

“ The Juggler Look how he throws them up and up,
The beautiful golden balls!
They hang aloft in the purple air,
And there never is one that falls.
He sends them hot from his steady hand,
He teaches them all their curves;
And whether the reach be little or long,
There never is one that swerves.
82 Some, like the tiny red one there,
He never lets go far;
And some he has sent to the roof of the tent
To swim without a jar.
So white and still they seem to hang,
You wonder if he forgot
To reckon the time of their return
And measure their golden lot. ”

“ The juggler, as he listened, repeatedly felt that cold thrill which he was wont to associate with a certain effect on his critical faculties. Only a high degree of excellence in whatever line appealing to them was capable of eliciting it. ”

“ As the juggler stepped back to the platform he took up the table-cloth and shook it out, that they might all be assured that there was nothing concealed in its folds.
[12] “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, taking heart of grace and his former manner of covert half-banter and mock politeness together, “we all know that it is by the action of the sun on the soil, and the dew and the rain, that the seeds of plants germinate and the green herb grows for the service of men. ”

“ He was all the more easily flattered to be thus singled out by the juggler, the conspicuous cynosure of all eyes, to give his judgment and pronounce upon the identity of the seed. The love of notoriety is a blasting passion, deadening all considerations of the conformable. ”

“ Said the hesitating manager, unconscious of this interlude, “I don’t half like that basket trick.”
“Why?” demanded the juggler, surprised. “It’s the best thing I can do. And when we rehearsed it, I thought we had it down to a fine point.”
“Yes,” still hesitating, “but I’m afraid it’s dangerous.”
The juggler burst into laughter. “It’s as dangerous as a pistol loaded with blank cartridges! See here,” he cried joyously, turning with outspread arms to the group of youths fantastic in their stage toggery, “I call you all to witness—if ever Millden Seymour hurts me, I intended to let him do it. ”

“ JUGGLERS, ROPE-DANCERS, AUTOMATA, ETC.
Under this title I comprehend not only those properly called jugglers, who, for the sake of money, by quick and artful motions of their hands, bodies, and limbs, and by various preparations, delude the senses in an agreeable manner, or practise an innocent deception on the spectators, so that they think they hear and see what they do not really hear and see, but also rope-dancers; people who place their bodies in positions according to all appearance dangerous ”

“ The suggestiveness of this lyric of two tones was not lost on the juggler. He was pierced by the poignancy of exile. He could hardly realize that he was of the same species as the beings who [28] had formed the “cultivated and intellectual audience” he had had the honor to entertain. Not one process of his mind could be divined by them; not one throb of their superstitious terrors could he share. ”

“ Take another illustration of quite a different character. A noted juggler perceived, at the commencement of his performance, that he was very narrowly watched by a gentleman whom he knew at once to be a very acute observer. He was embarrassed, as I have seen a practicer of the juggleries of animal magnetism embarrassed by a similar cause, and he felt that he could not practice his deceptions with so free and easy a hand, as he could if he were not watched by so an intelligent an eye. ”

“ Screams of delighted mirth came from the younger portion of the audience, and exclamations hardly less flattering from the laughing elders. But ever above the babel terrified shrieks, shrill and clamorous, rose higher and higher, and the juggler frowned with sudden sharp annoyance when he distinguished the fact that an elderly woman was crying out that these were the works of the devil,—that here was Satan, and that she would not bide easy till he was bound, neck and heels together, and cast forth into the river. ”

“ More than once occurred a painful pause, in which the heads of certain newly regenerate sinners, easily falling again under mundane influences or the control of Satan, turned alertly from the prayerful attitudes still conserved by their bodies to covertly survey the spellbound suppliant. Like unto these was the juggler. He had, on the first summons to prayer, decorously assumed that half-crouching posture common to devotionally disposed men, which intimates to the surrounding spectators the fact of a certain polite subduement of mind and body to divine worship. ”

“ Some jugglers perform with objects of the most diverse nature, throwing up, for example, at the same time, a large ball, an orange, and a piece of paper, and giving these articles of different size and weight such an impulsion that each falls and is thrown again at the moment desired. ”

“ And if in the ensuing excitements his mind did not match his lowly attitude, the juggler is not the only man who has ever been upon his knees with no prayer in his heart. Taking license from the stir near at hand, he too shifted his posture that his furtive glance might command a view of the man thus deputed to pray.
The suppliant was among the congregation, but his face, as he knelt in an open space near the pulpit, was irradiated by the slant of the sunset glow. Beheld above the benches and the kneeling congregation, it had a singularly detached effect,—it was like the painting of a head ”

“ Not so Tubal Cain Sims. It is to be doubted whether in all his life he was ever so earnestly and markedly benign and courteous as when he again met the juggler. His whole manner was so charged with the sentiment of placation that the young man’s quick discernment easily divined his state of mind and his covert terrors. It eliminated for the present any other course of action than drifting along the smooth tides of love’s young dream, for no elopement was possible when there was naught from which to flee. ”

“ It was no way, he argued within himself, to assume the character of a lovesick swain by demonstrating his superiority to the fair maiden,—to flout her poor and painful efforts by the exhibition of his glib accomplishment. “I must needs always have an audience,—be always exhibiting my various feats and knacks. I was born a juggler,” he said ruefully. ”

“ One hardly analyzes the breath of life as it is breathed; even when considered as nearly twenty-one per cent. of oxygen to seventy-nine per cent. of nitrogen, are we aught the wiser, for whence comes it, and alas, why does it go? To those creatures of a day, busy with the day, it seemed that mystery and doubt and troublous questioning had first entered Etowah Cove in the guise of a vagrant juggler, their earliest experience of a modern exponent of his most ancient craft. ”

“ A juggler tosses rings, balls, and knives in the air, and spins plates on top of a twenty-foot pole. His colleague balances a big bamboo on one shoulder, and a small boy climbs it and goes through wonderful feats on the cross-piece at the top. A ring of gaping admirers surrounds a master of the black art, who swallows a lighted pipe, drinks, whistles, produces the pipe for a puff or two, swallows it again, and complacently emits fanciful rings and wreaths of smoke. Hair-pins, rosaries, toys, and sweets are everywhere for sale. ”

“ We all know the juggler does not break the watch, and does not burn the handkerchief. We watched most closely the juggler's right hand, while the trick was done with his left. The one minute circumstance has been omitted that would have converted the trick into no-trick. It is likely to be the same in the accounts of the most wonderful phenomena of spiritualism."
If we desire a concrete instance of this omission of an important detail, we may turn once more to Dr. Furness's narrative. ”

“ A juggler, he says, one of the Kaan’s slaves, made his appearance, and at the Amir’s bidding, began to display his surprising accomplishments. Taking a wooden ball, with several holes in it, through which long thongs were passed, he laid hold of one of these, and slung the ball into the air. It went so high, that the spectators wholly lost sight of it. Observe, that the scene was the palace-court, sub Jove. There remained only a little of the end of the thong in the juggler’s hand, and of this he desired a juvenile assistant to lay hold, and mount. ”

“ His eye must take in the position of three, four, or five balls that are sometimes several yards apart, and he must solve these different problems in optics, mechanics, and mathematics instantaneously, ten, fifteen, twenty times per minute, and that, too, in the least convenient position—upon the back of a running horse, upon a tight-rope, upon a ball, or upon a barrel that he causes to revolve. His dexterity is wonderful. Many jugglers are content to perform their feats of skill with their hands, and, in addition, do balancing worthy of remark. ”

“ If a raylet fell to earth in the forest, it was not appreciable in the sombre depths, and the juggler, with all his craft, might hardly have made shift to follow his companion but for the spark and the light luminous smoke of the mountaineer’s pipe. Suddenly, as they turned a sharp edge of a series of great rocks, that like flying buttresses projected out from the steep perpendicular wall of a crag above them, all at once growing visible, a white flare shone before their eyes, illumining all the surrounding woods. ”