The first amateur sleight of hand show I ever took part in, was given by a boy named Albert Niblack. The _matinée magique_ was held in a stable attached to my father’s house. The entrance fee was three pins, orchestra chairs ten pins. The stage was erected in the carriage house, and the curtain consisted of a couple of sheets surreptitiously borrowed from the household linen closet. I acted as the conjurer’s assistant. The success of the entertainment was phenomenal. The audience consisted of some thirty children, with a sprinkling of negro nurses who came to preserve order among the smaller fry, and an old horse who persisted in sticking his head through a window near the stage, his stall being in an adjoining compartment. He occupied the only private box in the theatre. Among other tricks on the programme, young Niblack produced a small canary bird from an egg which had been previously examined and declared to be the real product of the hen by all the colored experts present, who tested it on their teeth. One fat old mammy, with her head picturesquely done up in a red bandana handkerchief, was so overcome by the trick that she shouted out: “Fo de Lawd sake! Dat boy mus’ be kin to de Debbil sho,’ ” and regretted the fact that she did not have a rabbit’s foot with her, to ward off the spells. Years have passed since then. Young Niblack is now Lieut. Commander Niblack, U. S. N., erstwhile naval attaché {205} of the American embassy at Berlin, etc. I wonder if he still practises magic. He obtained his insight into the mysteries of conjuring from a little book of sleights, puzzles and chemical experiments, a cheap affair and very crude. Like Houdin, he had to create the principles of legerdemain himself, for the book contained no real information on the subject. It was manufactured to _sell_ in two senses of the word, and to the best of my belief, was purchased at the circus. Among that audience were several children who have since become famous, to a greater or less extent. There was Umei Tsuda, a diminutive Japanese girl, sent to this country to be educated, and who now presides over a great normal school in Japan; Waldemar Bodisco (son of Count Bodisco, the Russian Minister to the United States), now an officer in the Czar’s navy; and, if I mistake not, Agustin de Iturbide, the adopted son of the ill-fated Maximilian, who attempted to found an empire in Mexico, bolstered up by French bayonets. Young Iturbide’s mother, after the tragic death of Maximilian, came to Georgetown to reside and educate her son, the heir to the throne of Mexico. Poor fellow, he was a prince, but he did not plume himself because of the fact, for he was in reality a “boy without a country.” We were classmates in the preparatory department of Georgetown College. His career is one of the romances of history. He is now living an exile in an old country house in the District of Columbia, where he spends his time reading and dreaming. III.