The Clarion

THE JUGGLERS OF INDIA.

Two of Their Principal Tricks Very Gauzy Frauds.

"The one class who interested me particularly in India were the jugglers. I have always had a fancy for prying into the secrets of prestidigitation, and I lost no opportunity of seeing these sleight-of-hand gentry at their tricks, and found occasion to witness many of their performances in different parts of India. My investigations lead me to state positively that the most remarkable stories told about them are fictions, based upon the flimsiest foundation of fact. The great majority of people like to be deceived in such matters, and will shut their eyes to palpable evidence of fraud, while travelers who eagerly seize upon every chance to pad their narratives with sensational points naturally throw a veil of mystery around the tricks of the Indian jugglers. Let us take, for instance, the two performances that have been most frequently and most marvelously written up-that is to say, the mysterious basket and the mango-growing tricks. I have seen both of them over and over again, and have found the same easily detected frauds to exist in every case. The baskets are bell shaped and have a false bottom, between which and the exterior wall of the basket there is ample room for a very small child to stow itself away. The spectators are not allowed to touch, or even to come very near to the basket, and in a casual glance at the interior one is not apt to detect the false bottom. The basket is placed over the child, who squats upon the hard ground, and after sufficient time has elapsed for the youngster to crawl into its place of concealment, the juggler horrifies his audience by passing his sword through the basket, and then upon upsetting it, shows that the child has disappeared. Meanwhile a duplicate child that closely resembles the first one enters upon the scene from the background, and the wonderful trick is completed. The famous mango-growing trick is even sillier than this. You have of course read how a man of mysterious arts plants a mango seed in a flower pot and then makes a dwarfed fruit-bearing tree spring up from that seed. The facts of the case are simply these: The seed is planted and the pot is then placed under a sort of tent, whose voluminous folds must not be touched by any but the juggler. The latter then waters the earth in the pot and does a lot of manipulating while his hands are concealed in the tent. Meanwhile a fellow-juggler is performing a series of other tricks to amuse and distract the attention of the spectators. When juggler number one has had time to change the pot for another that is hidden in the folds of the tent, he opens one side of the canvas a little and the second pot can be seen with a half-grown mango tree in it. After another interlude of the same sort the tent door is again opened and a third pot is disclosed which contains a little tree bearing a mango. The whole thing is such a weak attempt at deception that a person after studying it once or twice can only really wonder if any one has ever been really deceived by it. I always enjoyed the palming performances of the clever jugglers, for their skill and rapidity of action were something extraordinary, but their materializing tricks were such palpable absurdities that there was actually no fun in detecting them.-Interview with Hon. John Swift in San Francisco Call.