A LIST OF CONJURERS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 176, 11 August 1876, Page 14

A LIST OF CONJURERS.

The conjurers led a hard life in the middle ages, and some of their tricks, according to the tales told by their historians, must have been not only difficult but unpleasant. Thus, for instance, we are told that on a dispute arising between Zeito, of Bohemia, and a German conjurer, " the former, who was a little deformed man, with a very large mouth, ended it by swallowing his rival, ejecting his boots only, which were very dirty. He then withdrew, but in a short time returned, accompanied by the man whom he had swallowed." About a century later Cornelius Agrippa performed such terrible feats of necromancy, by the aid, no doubt, of his faithful attendant, a black dog, that it is a wonder he was allowed to die peaceably in his bed, which he is supposed to have done some years before the time when Faust was carried off by the devil. In a later age the conjurers had the mob to fear as well as the law, and there is a certain Dr. Lamb mentioned by Baxter, whose skill alarmed the people so much that they murdered him. In the last century several conjurers gained a considerable reputation. There was Fawkes, who performed the flower trick of the Indians ; Katterfelto, "at his own'wondersjwondering," whose black cat appeared one moment with a tail and the next without any ; Pinetti, who introduced a clairvoyant at his entertainments and made an automatic figure perform all the feats of the rope-dancers ; and the celebrated Von Kempelen, who invented the automatic chessplayer. Then there was Cagliostro, a great rascal of the type of Dousterswivel, who cheated a wealthy goldsmith much in the same manner as that knavish Q-erman cheated Sir Arthur Wardour ; there was Rollin, who died by the guillotine, and exclaimed, on seeing tha warrant for his execution, " That is the first paper I cannot conjure away !" Nor should we omit the mention of Robert, a clever but impudent French conjurer, who professed to raise the deud. The present age has not been behind its predecessors in skillful jugglers and magicians, nor has it been wholly free from the superstition exhibited in early times. Chalon transformed a bird into a young lady ; Sutton improved upon the trick by serving her up in an enormous pie ; and Ching, whose celestial origin is doubtful, concluded his feats " by sitting in the air, apparently upon nothing, like the Brahmin of Madras." Anderson, who claimed to have received his title of " Wizard of the North " from Sir Walter Scott himself, was one of the most successful of modernjjconjurers, and introduced several new tricks. In one of them he is said to have anticipated by more than thirty year 3 a deception practised by the Spiritualists. He produced a piece of paper ori which three or four gentlemen wrote their names, or any words or sentence, one of them afterward burning the paper. Anderson then produced a basket of eggs, sprinkled the ashes of the paper over the eggs with the gravity of a mediaeval magician, and then requested a gentleman to select an egg from the basket. On the egg being broken a perfect. fac-simile of the burned writing was found in the inside. Anderson had an unbrella, on which were engraved the words, " Great Wizard of the North." This caused apprehension frequently among the country folk. On one occasion, while staying at an inn, no one could be found to enter his room, and his meals was placed outside ; the bill was also delivered in the same fashion, and jVeat was the relief when the awful wizard took his departure. At another time Anderson had taken lodgings at Forres, when the fatal inscription on the umbrella caught the eye of the landlady. " A weezard, are ye ?" said the affrighted widow. " Then, for the love of gudeness, gang oot o' my house. I wadna lodge ye for ac nicht under my roof, nae for a' the woild. For the love o' heaven, gang awa, andtak your umbrella wi' ye." Anderson did not escape from the old lady so easily, for, on throwing him the money he had deposited, she exclaimed that it burned lior fingers, and fell down in a swoon. In her fall she cut her face and caused it to bleed. The neighbors declared Anderson had murdered the woman, and it was not until after spending a night in the jail that he obtained his release. — ' Pall Mall Gazette/