These stories belong in the very first of the travellers' tales. In 1356 Sir John Mandeville, called by some authorities "the Father of English Prose," after travelling thirty-four years, published a book detailing some of his marvellous "witnessings." Though many of his stories are absolutely impossible, yet so popular did his works become that, barring the Scriptures, more copies and manuscripts of the books containing his various "Magician Stories" have been handed down to posterity and exist to-day than any works of his contemporaries. Still, Mandeville did not mention this suspension trick, which is sometimes attributed to the Chinese and sometimes to the Hindoos. In Cologne, Germany, I purchased an encyclopædia, published in 1684, from which I reproduce a double-page engraving, which shows the Chinese magicians doing the tricks previously accredited, in the stories of travellers, to Hindoo conjurers. In "Lives of the Conjurers," Thomas Frost describes the suspension trick as offered about 1828 or 1829 at Madras by an old Brahmin with no better apparatus than a piece of plank with four legs. This he had formed into a stool, and upon it, in a little brass socket, he placed a hollow bamboo stick in a perpendicular position. Projecting from the stick was a kind of crutch, covered with a piece of common hide. These properties he carried with him in a bag, which was shown to all those who desired to witness his exhibition. The servants of the household then held a blanket before him, and, when it was withdrawn, he was discovered poised in midair about four feet from the ground, in a sitting posture, with the outer edge of one hand merely touching the crutch, while the fingers deliberately counted beads, and the other hand and arm were held in an upright position. The blanket was again held up before him, and the spectators caught a gurgling sound, like that occasioned by wind escaping from a bladder or tube. When the screen or blanket was again withdrawn, the conjurer was standing on the ground. [Illustration: The Brahmin suspension as shown in an illustration found in Robin's l'Almanach de Cagliostro.] The mystery was supposed to have been solved when Sheshal, commonly known as "the Brahmin of the Air," exhibited the trick in 1832 in Madras. It was observed that his stool was ornamented with two inlaid stars, and it was suggested that one of these might conceal a socket for a steel rod, passing through the bamboo, and that another rod, screwed to the perpendicular one and concealed by the piece of hide, might be connected with a mechanism of the same metal, passing up the sleeve and down the back, and forming a circular seat. This conjecture probably was not far from the truth, for while Frost is by no means the greatest of authorities on magic and magicians, in this particular instance I believe that his explanation of the trick is correct.