removed the top cup he
removed also the film which left the fish or frogs exposed to view.

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. He promised to come about four o clock,
which he did.

He first proceeded to eat a hat full of yellow paper, after which, with
a gag and a little puff, he pulled from his mouth a tube of paper of
the same color five or six yards long.

This was very skillfully performed and for a long time I was not able
to understand how he did it. But after awhile I discovered that with
the last mouthful of paper he put in a small roll, the centre of which
he started by puffing, and this he pulled out in a long tube. He did it
with so many groanings and with such pain in the region of the stomach,
that attention was directed either to his stomach or the roll, and
taken away from his mouth.

"I shall eat these needles," said he, as he held up half a dozen
needles, "and then eat this thread, after which I shall reproduce them."

He did so. He grated his teeth together causing a sound much like that
of breaking needles. He pretended to swallow them, working his tongue
back and forth in his tightly closed mouth, after which he drew forth
the thread on which all the needles were strung.

He had a number of small white bone needles which he stuck into his
nose and pulled out of his eyes, or which he pushed up under his upper
lip and took out of his eyes or vice versa. How he performed the above
trick I was not able to discover. He seemed to put them through the
tear duct, but whether he did or not I cannot say. How he got them from
his mouth to his eyes unless he had punctured a passage beneath the
skin, is still to me a mystery.

His last trick was to swallow a sword fifteen inches long. The sword
was straight with a round point and dull edges. There was no deception
about this. He was an old man and his front, upper teeth were badly
worn away by the constant rasping of the not over-smooth sword. He
simply put it in his mouth, threw back his head and stuck it down his
throat to his stomach.

[1] Small feet of the Chinese woman.

STORIES TOLD