Take the pretty mango-trick. The juggler who exhibits has no other drapery than half a yard of cotton, and no other apparatus than a handful of common toys. He has none of those elaborate mechanical contrivances, on which the European professors of legerdemain mostly rely for their effects. He takes a mango-stone, buries it in a little mud, and covers it with a jar. A few minutes later, the jar is lifted up; and lo, a tender green seed-leaf has delicately sprouted. Another peep into the magic hotbed, and we see that the tiny leaf has withered, and that a flourishing young tree has sprung into sudden existence. Or we have the egg-trick, which an eye-witness thus describes:--[39] “One of the party, a very handsome woman, fixed on her head a fillet of strong texture, to which were fastened, at equal distances, twenty pieces of string of equal length, with a common noose at the end of each. Under her arm she carried a basket, in which were carefully deposited twenty eggs. Her basket, the fillet, and the nooses were carefully examined by us. There was evidently no deception. “The woman advanced alone, and stood before us. She then began to move rapidly round on one spot, whence she never for one instant moved, spinning round and round like a top. “When her pace was at its height, she drew down one of the strings, which now flew horizontally round her head, and, securing an egg in the noose, she jerked it back to its original position, still twirling round with undiminished velocity, and repeating the process until she had secured the whole twenty eggs in the nooses previously prepared for them. She projected them rapidly from her hand the moment she had secured them, until at length the whole twenty were flying round her in an unbroken circle. Thus she continued spinning at undiminished speed for fully five minutes; after which, taking the eggs one by one from their nooses, she replaced them in her basket; and then in one instant stopped, without the movement of a limb, or even the vibration of a muscle, as if she had been suddenly transformed into marble. The countenance was perfectly calm, nor did she exhibit the slightest distress from her extraordinary exertions.” The basket-murder trick, to which we have already referred, is as follows:-- The juggler stepping forward, invites your examination of a light wicker basket, and when you profess yourself satisfied, he places it over a child, about eight years old, who is perfectly naked. He then asks the child some indifferent question, and you hear her reply to it from the basket. Question and answer are repeated frequently, each time in a louder and more impassioned manner, until the juggler, in a seeming fit of rage, threatens to kill the girl, who vainly supplicates for mercy.