You will smile, Excellency, when you hear what they call magic here. I was tightly blind-folded. Some people came up on the stage, and I announced exactly how many there were. I pointed to exactly where each one was standing, and indicated which were males and which were females. This made a most tremendous impression. I could hear gasps in the audience. I was told that the people rubbed their eyes as if they could not believe what they were seeing. You will understand, Excellency, that I accomplished this by turning on the male principle. The women here are so exquisitely receptive to it that when it is on their excitement causes changes in their body heat. It was simple for me to sense those fluctuations in temperature and to know which of the people before me were female. Next I put a piece of paper on a metal rack across the stage. I concentrated heat waves on it from my cupped hand. The paper burst into flames. As they say here on the street they call Broadway, that "brought down the house." They clapped and whistled and made me do it again and again. Luckily they conceived of it only as a wonderful trick. I ended the act by choosing a very unusual looking man from the audience. He came up on stage and we went behind a screen together. When we reappeared a few seconds later the audience screamed because I had twisted my face around to look exactly like his. Believe me, the reaction was terrific. Slowly I let my face slip back to "normal." If they realized there is no normal and that I could leave my face that way permanently, that would have been too much of a shock. They would have become silent and terrified and suspicious. I might have been in danger. I had to calculate carefully how much these people could take without realizing there was something alarmingly different about me. I learned my lesson one night. I turned on the male principle too strongly and some of the women in the audience became very agitated. Everyone was embarrassed. After the show the theatre manager came to my dressing room and asked me to have a drink with him at a little bar across the street. When we sat down he stared at me in a queer manner. "Just exactly what happened tonight?" he demanded. I looked surprised. "Weren't you satisfied with the act?" I asked. "The audience seemed to like me." "They liked you too much." I laughed. "You mean those silly females who tried to drag me off the stage?" He narrowed his eyes and thrust his face close to mine. "If I hadn't had the best-trained ushers in New York there'd have been a panic and a riot in there. How come?" I shrugged. "The women in your town seem remarkably excitable." "And in _your_ town?" "Not so," I declared truthfully. How truthfully Your Excellency well knows. * * * * *