You grip the railing in a sudden faintness. Has your brain deceived your eyes, or your eyes your brain? If you are a conjurer you try to convince yourself that it is all a clever sleight-of-hand exhibition, but in your heart you know it is not true. This creature, so near a beast, has debauched his manhood for a few paltry dollars, and in dragging himself down has dragged down the name of a worthy, a brilliant, a world-famous performer. Of the twentieth-century Boscos there are, alas, many. You will find them all over the world, in street carnivals, side-shows, fair-booths, and museums, and why the public supports such debasing exhibitions I have never yet been able to understand. I have seen half-starved Russians pick food from refuse-barrels. I have seen besotted Americans creep out from low dives to draw the dregs of beer-barrels into tomato cans. I have seen absinthe fiends in Paris trade body and soul to obtain their beloved stimulant. I have heard morphine fiends in Russia promise to exhibit the effect of the needle in return for the price of an injection. But never has my soul so risen in revolt as at sight of this bestial exhibition with which the name of Bosco, a nobleman and a conjurer of merit, has been linked. [Illustration: Anderson's opening programme at the Strand Theatre, Christmas week, 1848, showing that he duplicated the tricks offered by Robert-Houdin, who, in his "Memoirs," claims that Anderson's programme was stale and uninteresting by comparison with his own.] Even more despicable than his attack upon Bosco is Robert-Houdin's flaying of John Henry Anderson. In this he is both unmanly and untruthful. Hinging his attack on his surprise at the press methods and advertising adopted in England as opposed to the less spectacular means employed in France, he insinuates that Anderson's entire success was built not upon merit, ability, originality, or diversified programmes, but solely upon sensational advertising. On page 325 of the American edition of his "Memoirs" Robert-Houdin writes thus of his competitor: "On my arrival in England a conjurer of the name of Anderson, who assumed the title of Great Wizard of the North, had been performing for a long period at the little Strand Theatre. "This artist, fearing, doubtlessly, that public attention might be divided, tried to crush the publicity of my performances; hence he sent out on London streets a cavalcade thus organized: "Four enormous carriages, covered with posters and pictures representing all sorts of witchcraft, opened the procession. Then followed four-and-twenty merry men, each bearing a banner on which was painted a letter a yard in height. "At each cross-road the four carriages stopped side by side and presented a bill some twenty-five yards in length, while all the men (I should say letters), on receiving the word of command, drew themselves up in a line, like the vehicles. "Seen in front the letters formed this phrase: