Only the old-school magicians--the fakirs--retain the fire-eating trick in their entertainments. Any school-boy can do it now, as the preparation for it is very simple. By anointing the tongue with liquid storax, a red-hot poker may be licked cool, or coals taken from the fire may be placed upon the tongue and left there until they become black. To any person who has an appetite for flames, or for whom five-cent whiskey is not fiery enough, a trial of this trick will be gratifying. And should there be a desire to walk on fire or on red-hot iron, let the aspiring salamander take half an ounce of camphor, dissolve it in two ounces of aqua vitæ, add to it one ounce of quicksilver, one ounce of liquid storax, which is the droppings of myrrh, and prevents the camphor from firing; take also two ounces of hematis, which is red stone, to be had at the druggist's. Let them beat it to a powder in their great mortar, for being very hard it cannot well be reduced in a small one; add this to the ingredients already specified, and when the walking is to be done anoint the feet with the preparation, when the trick may be accomplished without the slightest danger. If anybody desires to be ghastly in his trickery, he may cut a man's head off and put it in a platter a yard from his body. This is done by causing a board, a cloth, and a platter to be purposely made with holes in each to fit a boy's neck. The board must be made of two planks, the longer and broader the better; there must be left within half a yard of the end of each plank half a hole, that both the planks being put together, there may remain two holes like those in a pair of stocks. There must be made, likewise, a hole in the cloth; a platter having a hole of the same size in the middle, and having a piece taken out at one side the size of the neck, so that he may place his head above; must be set directly over it; then the boy sitting or kneeling under the board must let the head only remain upon the board in the frame. To make the sight more dreadful, put a little brimstone into a chafing-dish of coals, and set it before the head of the boy, who must gasp two or three times that the smoke may enter his nostrils and mouth, and the head presently will appear stark dead, and if a little blood be sprinkled on his face, the sight will appear more dreadful. This is commonly practised with boys instructed for that purpose. At the other end of the table, where the other hole is made, another boy of the same size as the first boy must be placed, his body on the table and his head through the hole in the table, at the opposite end to where the head is which is exhibited. CHAPTER XXXI. THE INDIAN BOX-AND-BASKET TRICK.