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