d been offered an
explanation of what followed, I should have probably declined it.

Although I am satisfied that Wang's general performance was the first of
that kind ever given on American soil, it has, probably, since become so
familiar to many of my readers, that I shall not bore them with it here.
He began by setting to flight, with the aid of his fan, the usual number
of butterflies, made before our eyes of little bits of tissue-paper, and
kept them in the air during the remainder of the performance. I have a
vivid recollection of the judge trying to catch one that had lit on his
knee, and of its evading him with the pertinacity of a living insect.
And, even at this time, Wang, still plying his fan, was taking chickens
out of hats, making oranges disappear, pulling endless yards of silk
from his sleeve, apparently filling the whole area of the basement with
goods that appeared mysteriously from the ground, from his own sleeves,
from nowhere! He swallowed knives to the ruin of his digestion for years
to come; he dislocated every limb of his body; he reclined in the air,
apparently upon nothing. But his crowning performance, which I have
never yet seen repeated, was the most weird, mysterious, and astounding.
It is my apology for this long introduction, my sole excuse for writing
this article, and the genesis of this veracious history.

He cleared the ground of its encumbering articles for a space of about
fifteen feet square, and then invited us all to walk forward, and
again examine it. We did so gravely. There was nothing but the cemented
pavement below to be seen or felt. He then asked for the loan of a
handkerchief; and, as I chanced to be nearest him, I offered mine. He
took it, and spread it open upon the floor. Over this he spread a large
square of silk, and over this, again, a large shawl nearly covering the
space he had cleared. He then took a position at one of the points of
this rectangle, and began a monotonous chant, rocking his body to and
fro in time with the somewhat lugubrious air.

We sat still and waited. Above the chant we could hear the striking
of the city clocks, and the occasional rattle of a cart in the street
overhead. The absolute watchfulness and expectation, the dim, mysterious
half-light of the cellar falling in a grewsome way upon the misshapen
bulk of a Chinese deity in the back ground, a faint smell of opium-smoke
mingling with spice, and the dreadful uncertainty of what we were re