Luckily for the subject of this sketch, he was born too late to serve as food for powder. He lived to grow to man’s estate and honorable old age, and became the veritable Napoleon of necromancy. His career makes fascinating reading. Houdin’s father was a watchmaker, and from him he inherited his remarkable mechanical genius. At the age of eleven, Jean-Eugène was sent to college at Orleans. On the completion of his studies, he entered a notary’s office at Blois, but spent most of his time inventing little mechanical toys and devices, instead of engrossing {135} dusty parchment, so the notary advised him to abandon the idea of becoming a lawyer and take up a mechanical trade. Houdin joyfully took up his father’s occupation of watchmaking, for which he had a decided bent. One evening the young apprentice went to a bookseller’s shop in Blois and asked for a work on horology by Berthoud. The shopman by mistake handed him a couple of odd volumes of the _Encyclopédie_, which somewhat resembled Berthoud’s book. Jean-Eugène went home to his attic, lit a candle, and prepared to devote an evening to hard study, but judge of his surprise to find that the supposed treatise on watchmaking was a work on natural magic and prestidigitation, under the head of scientific amusements. He was delighted at the revelations contained in the mystic volume, which told how to perform tricks with the cards, to cut off a pigeon’s head and restore it again, etc., etc. Here was an introduction to the New Arabian Nights of enchantment. He slept with the book under his pillow, and possibly dreamed of African wizards, genii, and all sorts of incantations. This little incident brought about great changes in Houdin’s life. He secretly vowed to become a prestidigitateur,—a rôle for which he was eminently fitted, psychologically and physically. The principles of sleight of hand Houdin had to create for himself, for the mystic volume, though it revealed the secrets of the tricks, gave the neophyte no adequate idea of the subtle passes and misdirection required to properly execute them.