The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-04-02 00:00:00

JUGGLERS OF INDIA

A party of jugglers came forward on one occasion to per-
form publicly in the yard of the barracks at Madras. Many
hundreds of people, of all kinds, ages, and denominatieins,
including the•soldiery of the establisment, assembled to wit-
ness the exhibition • and some little temporary arrangements
were made, that all might see and hear conveniently. The
leader of the jugglers, who were all, of course, natives of
.Hindostan, requested the commanding office to place a guard
of men around the scene of display—a precaution which was
adopted, and which proved a very wise one. The floor of the
,court be it observed, was composed of sand, firm and well
trodden. On this ground then, after some preliminary tricks
of an inferior kind, one man was left alone with a litte girl,
the latter seeming about eight or nine years old. Beside them
stood a tall narrow basket, perhaps three or four feet high,
by little more than a foot in width, and open at the top. No
other object, living or inanimate, appeared on the ground.
After a short period, spent by the man in conversing with the
girl, he seemed to get angry, and began to rail loudly at her
for her neglect of some wish of his. The child attempted to
soothe him, but he continued to show an increased degree of
irritation as he went on. By degrees he lashed himself up
into such apparent fury, that the foam actually stood upon his
lips,.and being naturally of an unprepossessing countenance,
he looked, to the white spectators at least, as like an enraged
demon as might be. Finally, his wrath at the girl rose seem-
ingly to an uncontrollable height, and he seized her, and put
her beneath the basket, or rather, turned down the open
mouth of the basket over her person. She was thus entirely
shut up, the turned bottom of the basket closing her in above.
Having thus disposed of the child, in spite of all her entreat-
ies, the man drew his sword, which was as bright as the sur-
face of a mirror, and he appeared as if about to wreak some
further evil on the object of his ire. After some momerkts,
during which he talked to himself and to the enclosed girl as
if justifying his anger, he did actually at length, plunge the
sword down into the basket, and drew it out dripping with
blood, or at least with blood red drops ! The child screamed
piteously from her prison, but in vain ; 'for the man plunged
the weapon again and again into the scene of her confinement.
As he did so, the cries of the girl became faint by degrees,
and in the end died away altogether. The deed of death was
consummated!

So, at least, thought most of the horror-struck persons
who witnessed this action. And well it was for the chief
performer in it that he had requested, a guard to be placed ;
for it required all the exertions of this guard to prevent the
aroused soldiery, who believed this to lie no trick, but a
piece of diabolical butchery, from leaping int o the arena, and
tearing the man to pieces. The excitable Irishmen among
the number, in particular, ground their teeth against one an-
other, and muttered language not very complimentary to the
juggler. Even the officers, whose better education and ex-
perience made them less open to such feelings, grew pale
with uneasiness. But observe.the issue of all this.

When the man seemed to have carried his rage to the last
extremity, warned, perhaps, by the looks of the soldiery that
it would be as well to close the exhibition without delay, he
raised his bloody sword for an instant before the eyes of the
assemblage, and then struck the basket smartly with it. The
basket tumbled over to a side, and on the spot which it had
covered, in place of the expected corpse of the girl whose last,
groans had just been heard, there was seen—nothing ! No-
thing but the flat sand of the court yard! No vestige of dress
or any other thing to indicate that the girl had been there I
The amazement of the spectators was unbounded; and it
was, if possible, rendered more intense, when; after a lapse
of a few seconds, the identical little girl came bounding from
the side of the court-yard—from among the spectator's feet,
it seemed—and clasped the juggler round the knees, with
every sign of affection, and without the slightest marks of
having-undergone any injury whatever. As we have said,
the astonishment of the assembly was immeasurable; and it
might really well be so, seeing that the feat was performed
in the centre of a court, every point of the circumference of
which was crowded with spectators, whose eyes were never
off the performers for one instant. As to the notion of a
subterranean passage, the nature of. the, ground put that out
of the question and, besides, that nothing of that kind exist-
ed, was infidel:lain to all who chose to satisfy themselves on
the subject, by looking at the scene of the performances when
they had closed. Every one was sure that the child had
been put below the basket, and that she did not get out of it
in the natural way. But she did get oat ; and how ? It is
impossible to say, though there can he no doubt that it was
accomplished by some skilful manoeuvre.

A somewhat similar feat is occasionally performed with ani-.
mats. A juggler will place a lean dog below one of these
baskets, and, presto, pass!, when he lifts it up, you will be-
hold a litter of as fine pups as ever whipper-in could desire.
But most people .will probably think the tree-trick a more
wonderful one than any of these. A juggler, in performing
this, chooses either a small spot of earth, of the extent of two
or three feet square, and in the open air ; or he takes a large
flower pot, and fills it with mould for his purpose, Either of
the ways will do.'" Having this small plot of earth before him,
and the Spectators ranged around, at the distance of two or
three feet, the juggler shows to the company a mango stone,
or the stone found in the centre of the eastern fruit known by
that name, which varies in size from that of an apple up-
wards. This stone the juggler then plants in the earth, at
the depth of several inches, and covers it up. Not many
minutes elapse until the spectators behold a small green shoot
arise from the spot. It increases visibly in height and size
every. moment, until it attains the altitude a foot or so: It
then begins to send off branches from the main stem ; on
these branches leaves begin to appear, bearing the natural hue
of vegetation. Buds next present themselves ; the whole af-
fair, meanwhile, assuming the regular aspect, in every par-
ticular, of a miniature tree, some four feet high. The buds
are followed by blossoms, and, finally, the green fruit of the
mango meets the astonished eyes of the spectators. " Look,
but touch not, is all this time the juggler's word, and be
himself also preserves the character of an overlooker. When
the fruit has arrived at something like a fair growth for such
a tree, the originator of this extraordinary vegetation plucks
it, and hands it to the spectators. This is the winding up Of
the charm: The assembled persons handle the fruit, and see
nothing in it in the slighest degree different from the ordi-
nary produce Of the mango, elaborated by the Slow vegetation
of months. Onr informant on these points ate a portion of
the fruit brought forth by this jugglery, and found it to taste
exactly like the raw mango. ' The whole proCeii; now de-
tailed, usually occupies about a quarterof an hour, from the
planting of the stone to the production of' the fruit. Though
he gives away the fruit, the performer does not part with the
tree. This feat, Which is perfectly familiar to all who have
been in India, is certainly. en extraordinary one, and affords
the most effectual evidence of the powers of deception to
which the rare of jugglers has attained.—Chambers' Journal.