Another favorite illusion was the borrowing of a watch, which was pounded and afterwards found under one of the spectators (not a confederate). It was one of the duties of Wood to slip the borrowed watch in place while ostensibly selling magic books. Wyman retired from the stage eventually, and lived in Philadelphia for several years at 612 North Eleventh Street. Afterwards he moved to Burlington, New Jersey, where he bought an imposing country place. He owned considerable real estate. He died July 31, 1881. A few days before his death he called to see his old friend Thomas W. Yost, the manufacturer of magical apparatus, of Philadelphia. He must have had a premonition of his demise, for he remarked to Mr. Yost, as he left the store: “You will not see me again. This is the last of Wyman.” In a few days he was dead. He was buried at Fall River, Massachusetts, the home of his wife. Wyman’s show consisted of ventriloquism, magic, and an exhibition of Italian _fantochini_ (puppets). He was one of the best entertainers of his day. II. I took to magic at an early age—not the magic of the sleight of hand artist, however, but the real goetic or black magic, {204} as black as any old grimoire of mediæval days could make it. Aye, darker in hue than any inveighed against in the famous Dæmonologie of King James I. of Protestant memory. I believed firmly in witches, ghosts, goblins, voodoo spells, and conjure doctors. But what can you expect of a small boy surrounded by negro servants, the relics of the old régime of slavery, who still held tenaciously to the devil-lore of their ancestors of the African jungle? At nightfall I dared not go near the smoke-house for fear of the witches who held their revels there. One day my father brought home a book for his library. It was Mackey’s _Extraordinary Popular Delusions; or, The Madness of Crowds_. That work of absorbing interest opened my eyes to the unreality of the old superstitions. I read it with avidity. It became a sort of Bible to me. It lies on the table before me, as I pen these lines; a much-thumbed, faded, old book.