Though it took us so long to get acquainted, we rather “cottoned to” one another after the ice was broken, and for the last twenty years have been great chums. In that time we have knocked about the world a good bit together. Really, I mean, not like our first travel. In the younger days he used to drop in on me every now and then with a serious air, and remark:
“Say, want to go to Shanghai this evening? Well, shut your eyes. Presto! change! here we are! Now, come around, and we’ll see the sights.”
And there we were in Shanghai, using our eyes and holding our noses. But all that, you understand, was one of his sleight-of-hand tricks. It was very pleasant and inexpensive travel, and I learned a good deal from it; but the grind of it was that I could not bring back any of the wonderful things we saw in the bazars. I’d just about as soon not travel as to be unable to collect trophies from the country I am visiting. It was really not his fault, of course. He is the most accommodating fellow in the world; but even jugglery has its limits; and after a friend has given you a trip to any part of the world you choose, and brought you back safe and sound, and paid all your expenses out of his own pocket, no well bred guest could have the face to ask him to bring also a cargo of all sorts of truck. When I used to groan at coming away empty-handed, he would say frankly: “Sorry my boy, but it really can’t be helped. I’m glad to take you anywhere, and make it as pleasant for you as I can; but my pass is for passengers only, and the baggage business is strictly prohibited. It is too bulky; and then think what trouble I should get into with the customs officers if we went to bringing in such cargoes outside the regular channels.”
In later years we have pretty thoroughly made up for that aggravation; for nowadays I am the host, and wouldn’t think of starting on a journey without inviting him to come along; and we bring back all sorts of interesting plunder from everywhere, until the house we occupy together looks more like a museum than anything else. He himself admits that it’s a good deal ahead of the old way; but even the delight of collecting—and no boy or man half knows what life is until he “collects” something, and earnestly—even that pleasure would not compensate me for the loss of his company. He is the very best traveling companion I ever found; so ready to do whatever you wish, so full of information, so helpful in emergencies of any sort. Some people who have traveled with him have tried to tell me that he cowardly deserted them in time of danger; but there must be two sides to this story, for I have seen him in a great many tight pinches, and he was clear-headed and quick as a wink to do the right thing. To tell the truth, he has saved my life a score of times, all by his dexterity; so you may be sure that when people talk of his running away and leaving them in the lurch, I resent the imputation, and conclude they were the ones really to blame. In knocking about the frontiers I have found a good many men, of several different colors, who make you feel, “Well, if it came to a fight for life, with my back against a rock, that would be a good fellow to have beside me.” But among all those brave men—all of whom I admire, and some of whom I love—I would rather have him by me, in a pinch, than any other one.
You must not think from this that my friend is a desperado, or a professional fighter, or anything of the sort. On the contrary, his disposition is as peaceful as his habits are quiet, and he hates any sort of a row. It is only in the crises which any man may meet, and every man must sometimes meet who travels outside the beaten tracks, when it is necessary and manful to fight, that he suddenly turns combative and pitches in. Ordinarily, he is a plain, practical business man, who, for his own part, might have retired long ago, but remains in the firm for the sake of the junior partners. He works harder than any of them—and then, when business hours are over, diverts himself and his friends by little exhibitions of his matchless skill as a conjurer. At such times he likes to forget work and worry altogether, and to be jolly and free of care and full of pranks as a boy. I have seen people so inconsiderate as to insist on boring him by “talking shop” out of office hours, but he always resents it. He is rather nervous and very impressionable, apt to fall into the mood of those who are with him; and he sometimes gets so tired and confused as to show very little of his usual wisdom. Indeed, I have seen him, when very weary, make a flat failure of some trick at magic, which ordinarily he could do with astounding cleverness.
Undoubtedly his greatest claim to public respect is in the quiet, every-day wisdom of his practical career; but his gifts as a magician are so brilliant and so fascinating that one naturally thinks of them first. And, in spite of his long business training, there isn’t a mercenary streak in him. Some of his most wonderful performances are given gratis, and he even seems to prefer an audience of one to what the managers would call “a paying house.”
Eh? You would like to know what he can do that is so much bigger than the tricks of the wizards that get their $200 a night? Well, if I were to tell you all I’ve seen him do, we wouldn’t be done this side of 1900; but here are some few things, and if you do not admit that Herrmann and all the rest are mere greenhorns to him, I’ll agree never to go near another of his performances.
I never knew him to fry eggs in a stove-pipe hat, nor to pick twenty-dollar gold pieces out of people’s eyes, nor to chop off a man’s head and then stick it on again, nor any of those threadbare sensations, though he sometimes practices simple illusions like making things appear where they are not, or causing them to seem not to be where you really know they are. But those are trifles, just to keep his hand in; his claim as champion conjurer of the world rests on very different accomplishments. For instance, one of his favorite tricks is to take a careless fly-away boy and turn him into a strong, wise man—turn him “for keeps,” too. I’ve seen him do that a hundred times, and you will agree that that is a very useful trick, as well as a very difficult one. When one sees how smoothly he does it, one is doubly sorry that he doesn’t get all the boys up on the stage and experiment on them; but, of course, a complete change of personality is a serious thing, and he would not be justified in taking any such liberties without the full consent of the subject.
An almost equally remarkable trick, and one he is equally fond of, is to take a thoroughly homely girl and put a brand-new face on her. Not exactly a beautiful face, for he says that is none of his business, but a face that every one likes to look at. Yet I know girls so foolish as to decline treatment by this great specialist, and to think cosmetics better.
My friend’s hobby for experimenting upon young people, and his innate fondness for them, as shown by his patience with their frequently slighting treatment of him, made me remark one evening: “How is it you are so good-natured with these rattleheads? Nobody else would have the patience. Even when a fellow has snubbed you in the most discourteous way you seem to bear no grudge, but to be always ready to do him a good turn if there is a chance.”