The Portland daily press., 1890-11-27
FIRE EATERS TRICKS.
How the SaIambos Perform their
Wonderful Feats.
New York HERALD

WoUuofrut rehtSs
New York Heraldl
Among the various methods of earn
ing your bread by the sweat of your
brow, fire eating is one that would seem
but few people would adopt as means
Of livelihood. But for years and years
people with cast iron palates and brazen
plated lips and tongues have exhibited
their peculiar abilities for a stipend
AT the present time in this country there
are half dozen men and women who
go about from dime museum to variety
hail and from variety hall to ''store
show" and astonish the natives All
these people do seemingly the most Won
Gerful things, and as the business is diff
ficult to learn their numbers are limited.
The present corps Of fiery entertainers
have, however, been lately augmented by
brother and sister, whose ability in that
ineputs eyerythingin the shade ever seen
here. They are known on the bills as
Earle and Ollie Salambo, and are further
dignified for show purposes as the ''Hu-
man Electrical Dynameters The Sa-
lambos touch each other with their fingers
and produce sparks; they open their
mouths and a stream of fame two feet
long issues from them if they but touch
their lips with the ends of their fingers;
they swallow boiling wax and blow sparks
showers of sparks-from the end of
hollow glass tube; they take gas pipe
with four gas jets on it, and by the SIM
pie process of putting an end in the
mouth and drawing their hands across
the gas jets four good sized flames burst
into brilliancy.
HOW THE TRICKS ARE DONE.
1t was only steady practice and con-
slant coating of their mouths and hands
and soles of their feet with a solution,
and the business was comparatively easy
and they really did not swallow anything
at all. Each performer has his own
recipe for the solution he drinks and
rinses his mouth and hands with, but the
principal ingredients of it in each case
remain the same. When the mouth is
rinsed out in that it forms sort of an
artificial skin or film that it takes lit
tie while to destroy, and as long as that
coating remains there is absolutely no
danger, and the rest of their wonderful
tricks are nothing but delusion and in
most cases sleight of hand.
There is one performer who is known
in museum circles as the Human
Lamp" and he makes lots of money by
doing this act. He drinks some kero-
sene oil in view of the audience, puts
wick in his mouth, lights the wick with
a match, puts lamp chimney over the
flame and burns merrily away. On his
stand is q lamp half filled with oil.
From the can he pours what purports to
be oil in the lamp. 1t is not. 1t is
water, and, of course, the oil already in
the lamp floats on top of the water; then
he lights the oil to prove what he poured
out was oil. He gravely drinks from
the oil can, puts wick saturated with
sweet oil in his mouth, lights the wick,
and there you are. Very simple, is it
not?
Now there is another gentleman who
walks on red hot bars, and seizing a
horse shoe heated red hot in forge near
by bites the heated ends off and pre-
tends to swallow them. He is not so
much of a trickster as the Human
Lamp" and really earns all the money
he gets, for although his bare feet are
coated with a sulphuric solution and
his mouth and lips well plastered with
the same, it is real hard work to bite
pieces of iron in halves. even if the heat
makes them soft and pliable, and if they
are kept in the mouth too long, in spite
OF the film, they are very hot and I'M
comfortable indeed. This gentleman
calls himself st. Elmo, and another part
OF his performance is to take oakum
balls, saturated with blazing pitch, in
his mouth, q half dozen in succession.
THE HUMAN GAS WELL.
And that trick gets more applause
than the biting of the horseshoe, but it
is very easy of accomplishment, because
the minute you put fire in a place where
there is no air it Immediately goes out,
and so the instant st. Elmo closes his
mouth the fire is quenched in the blaz-
ing ball, and all there is about it is
the disagreeable taste of the oakum ball
and little warmth, which may not be
pleasant, but can be borne for $50 a
week.
Another trick of the fire eaters is to
take piece of cotton and put it in their
mouths, and then open their mouths and
blow smoke and streams of fire out.
Every child, or almost every child,
knows that if you put spark in the GEN.
ter of ball of cotton and blow through
itsthe fire will eat all the center out,
leaving the mere shell.
There is a companion performer to the
Human Lamp" known sometimes as
Natural Gas" or the Human Gas
Well" He gets more money than the
man who drinks water for oil, and de-
serves to. What he does is precisely
the basis Of all the work done by the Sa-
lambos. Instead of eating cotton and
pitch and wax when heated. he coats his
mouth with his own privG.3 aolution
and unseen stoops down and picks I'D
a round worsted ball saturated with gas
oline. Now, gasoline is very volatile,
and when mixed with air forms a vapor
that is easily ignited and gives a very
fierce and blue flame.
A gasoline ball held in the mouth and
blown steadily through, the vapor goes
through the gas tube and is ignited, and
that's all there is to the Human Gas
Well" The lecturer Of the museum
where he works generally wildly de-
scribes where he was born and how his
parents could not keep him from eating
the dirt in the natural gas fields of Ohio,
and other interesting fabrications