It must be remembered that Hindu fakirs seldom or never travel singly, but always in troupes of threes and fours; and, during the performance of one of the fakirs, the others assist him by passing him the articles he uses in his performance—jars, water, earth, etc. Now, every time the conjuror moves the shawl from the growing plant, he tosses the shawl to his assistant, and shows his hands empty. When receiving the shawl back from his assistant, he also shows his hands empty; then shakes out the shawl and shows both sides of it—showing, in this way, that nothing is concealed in the shawl, and that he introduces nothing under cover of the said shawl. To all appearances, nothing could be fairer. And, indeed, nothing is fairer at first; but the conjuror shakes the shawl less and less vigorously every time he places it over the mango-tree, until, towards the end (the seventh or eighth time, let us say) he hardly shakes it at all. The spectators, having seen it empty so many times, get into the habit of mind of thinking it is empty as a matter of course, and pay no attention to this part of the performance, after the first few times. Their thoughts and attention are centered upon the mango-tree and its growth. So, when the conjuror has worked out all the shoot from the seed, he must perforce introduce a _fresh_ shoot of larger proportions; and he does this in the following manner: He passes on word to his assistant, by means of a secret sign, that he has reached the end of his present stock of “occult vitalizing influence”—in other words, the mango shoot—and the assistant, in passing him back the shawl or cloth this time passes him back _another_ cloth, which he has secretly exchanged for the original one—the one the conjuror began operations with. This second cloth is double, and contains a very large mango shoot, more or less doubled up in the manner of the first shoot that was placed within the mango seed. A slit in the cloth enables the conjuror to extract the second shoot, and place it in the mound of earth, working this shoot out to its natural size with his fingers. When this large shoot is worked out to its full limit it is a very large tree, and the conjuror has only to remove the cloth to display it to his astonished onlookers. The cloth just employed is exchanged for the original while the eyes of the spectators are fascinated by the huge tree just exhibited to them, and when the trick is concluded this cloth is handed for examination; and, of course, no trickery is discovered in connection with it. The whole performance is a very pretty chapter in the psychology of deception.