"I have smelt the several odours of his liquors; nay, I have seen him set fire to a handkerchief dipt in that which smelt like brandy, and it burnt blue like spirituous liquors.... Nay, he frequently promised at Venice to give the water back again in milk and oil. But I think he did not keep his word. In short, he concluded this scene with swallowing successfully thirty or forty glasses of water, always from the same bucket, and after having given notice to the company by his man (who served as an interpreter) that he was going to disembogue, he threw his head back, and spouting out the fair water, he made it spring up with an impetuosity like that of the strongest _jet d'eau_. This last feat delighted the people infinitely more than all the rest, and during the month he was at Francfort numbers from all parts came to see this slovenly exercise. Though he repeated it more than once a day he had more than four hundred spectators at a time. Some threw their handkerchiefs, and some their gloves upon the stage, that he might wet them with the water he had cast up, and he returned them differently perfumed, sometimes with rose-water, sometimes with orange-flower-water, and sometimes with brandy." Another famous juggler and water-spouter was Floram Marchand, whose picture is herewith reproduced. Judging from his dress, he antedated Manfrede. Bell's _Messenger_ of July 16th, 1816, tells of a sword-swallower whose work is extremely pertinent to this discussion, and the clipping is quoted verbatim: [Illustration: Floram Marchand. From an old, undated English publication in the Harry Houdini Collection.] "The French papers give a curious account of one James de Falaise, a Norman, about fifty years of age, living in the Rue St. Honoré. It is said that this extraordinary man will swallow whole walnuts, shell and all, a tobacco pipe, three cards rolled together, a rose with all its leaves, long stalk, and thorns, a living bird, and a living mouse, and, lastly, a live eel. Like to the Indian jugglers, he swallows the blade of a sabre about thirteen inches long of polished steel. This operation he performs very slowly, and with some precaution; though he evinces no symptom of pain. After every solid body that he swallows, he always takes a small dose of wine expressly prepared for him. He does not seem to make any effort to kill the living animals that he takes in his mouth, but boasts that he feels them moving in his stomach." [Illustration: Position taken by the subject in the Indian basket trick before he is covered by the sheet.] In my collection is the handbill of a stone-swallower who exhibited at No. 10 Cockspur Street, London, charging an admission fee of half-a-crown. [Illustration: Indian fakir seated in the basket after the subject has been "vanished."]