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Henty, G. A. (George Alfred), 1832-1902

"Rujub, the Juggler"

By
the way, you must come in here this evening. There is a juggler in
the station, and Mr. Hunter has told him to come round. The servants
say the man is a very celebrated juggler, one of the best in India,
and as the girls have never seen anything better than the ordinary
itinerant conjurers, my husband has arranged for him to come in
here, and we have been sending notes round asking everyone to come
in. We have sent one round to your place, but you must have come
out before the chit arrived."
"Oh, I should like that very much!" Isobel said. "Two or three men
came to our bungalow at Cawnpore and did some conjuring, but it
was nothing particular; but uncle says some of them do wonderful
things--things that he cannot account for at all. That was one
of the things I read about at school, and thought I should like
to see, more than anything in India. When I was at school we went
in a body, two or three times, to see conjurers when they came to
Cheltenham. Of course I did not understand the things they did,
and they seemed wonderful to me, but I know there are people who
can explain them, and that they are only tricks; but I have read
accounts of things done by jugglers in India that seemed utterly
impossible to explain--really a sort of magic."
"I have heard a good many arguments about it," Mrs. Hunter said;
"and a good many people, especially those who have seen most of
them, are of opinion that many of the feats of the Indian jugglers
cannot be explained by any natural laws we know of.


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