all families.

His stay in this place will be but short, not exceeding above two or three nights.

Good fire to keep the gentry warm.

This shows how little advance had been made in the art in a century. Richardson had presented practically the same programme a hundred years before. Perhaps the exposure of Richardson's method by his servant put an end to fire-eating as a form of amusement for a long time, or until the exposure had been forgotten by the public. Powell himself, though not proof against exposure, seems to have been proof against its effects, for he kept on the even tenor of his way for sixty years, and at the end of his life was still exhibiting.

Whatever the reason, the eighteenth century fire-eaters, like too many magicians of the present day, kept to the stereotyped programmes of their predecessors. A very few did, however, step out of the beaten track and, by adding new tricks and giving a new dress to old ones, succeeded in securing a following that was financially satisfactory.

In this class a Frenchman by the name of Dufour deserves special mention, from the fact that he was the first to introduce comedy into an act of this nature. He made his bow in Paris in 1783, and is said to have created quite a sensation by his unusual performance. I am indebted to Martin's Naturliche Magie, 1792, for a very complete description of the work of this artist.

Dufour made use of a portable building, which was specially adapted to his purposes, and his table was spread as if for a banquet, except that the edibles were such as his performance demanded. He employed a trumpeter and a tambour player to furnish music for his repast—as well as to attract public attention. In addition to fire-eating, Dufour gave exhibitions of his ability to consume immense quantities of solid food, and he displayed an appetite for live animals, reptiles, and insects that probably proved highly entertaining to the not overrefined taste of the audiences of his day. He even advertised a banquet of which the public was invited to partake at a small fee per plate, but since the menu consisted of the delicacies just described, his audiences declined to join him at table.

His usual bill-of-fare was as follows:

Soup—boiling tar torches, glowing coals and small, round, super-heated stones.

The roast, when Dufour was really hungry, consisted of twenty pounds of beef or a whole calf. His hearth was either the flat of his hand or his tongue. The butter in which the roast was served was melted brimstone or burning wax. When the roast was cooked to suit him he ate coals and roast together.

As a dessert he would swallow the knives and forks, glasses, and the earthenware dishes.

He kept his audience in good humor by presenting all this in a spirit of crude comedy and, to increase the comedy element, he introduced a number of trained cats. Although the thieving proclivities of cats are well known, Dufour's pets showed no desire to share his repast, and he had them trained to obey his commands during mealtime. At the close of the meal he would become violently angry with one of them, seize the unlucky offender, tear it limb from limb and eat the carcass. One of his musicians would then beg him to produce the cat, dead or alive. In order to do this he would go to a nearby horse-trough and drink it dry; would eat a number of pounds of soap, or other nauseating substance, clowning it in a manner to provoke amusement instead of disgust; and, further to mask the disagreeable features—and also, no doubt, to conceal the trick—would take the cloth from the table and cover his face; whereupon he would bring forth the swallowed cat, or one that looked like it, which would howl piteously and seem to struggle wildly while being disgorged. When freed, the poor cat would rush away among the spectators.

Dufour gave his best performances in the evening, as he could then show his hocus-pocus to best advantage. At these times he appeared with a halo of fire about his head.

His last appearance in Paris was most remarkable. The dinner began with a soup of asps in simmering oil. On each side was a dish of vegetables, one containing thistles and burdocks, and the other fuming acid. Other side dishes, of turtles, rats, bats and moles, were garnished with live coals. For the fish course he ate a dish of snakes in boiling tar and pitch. His roast was a screech owl in a sauce of glowing brimstone. The salad proved to be spider webs full of small explosive squibs, a plate of butterfly wings and manna worms, a dish of toads surrounded with flies, crickets, grasshoppers, church beetles, spiders, and caterpillars. He washed all this down with flaming brandy, and for dessert ate the four large candles standing on the table, both of the hanging side lamps with their contents, and finally the large center lamp, oil, wick and all. This leaving the room in darkness, Dufour's face shone out in a mask of living flames.

A dog had come in with a farmer, who was probably a confederate, and now began to bark. Since Dufour could not quiet him, he seized him, bit off his head and swallowed it, throwing the body aside. Then ensued a comic scene between Dufour and the farmer, the latter demanding that his dog be brought to life, which threw the audience into paroxysms of laughter. Then suddenly candles reappeared and seemed to light themselves. Dufour made a series of hocus-pocus passes over the dog's body; then the head suddenly appeared in its proper place, and the dog, with a joyous yelp, ran to his master.

Notwithstanding the fact that Dufour must have been by all odds the best performer of his time, I do not find reference to him in any other authority. But something of his originality appeared in the work of a much humbler practitioner, contemporary or very nearly contemporary with him.

We have seen that Richardson, Powell, Dufour, and generally the better class of fire-eaters were able to secure select audiences and even to attract the attention of scientists in England and on the Continent. But many of their effects had been employed by mountebanks and street fakirs since the earliest days of the art, and this has continued until comparatively recent times.

In Naturliche Magie, in 1794, Vol. VI, page 111, I find an account of one Quackensalber, who gave a new twist to the fire-eating industry by making a "High Pitch" at the fairs and on street corners and exhibiting feats of fire-resistance, washing his hands and face in melted tar, pitch and brimstone, in order to attract a crowd. He then strove to sell them a compound—composed of fish glue, alum and brandy—which he claimed would cure burns in two or three hours. He demonstrated that this mixture was used by him in his heat resistance: and then, doubtless, some "capper" started the ball rolling, and Herr Quackensalber (his name indicates a seller of salves) reaped a good harvest.

I have no doubt but that even to-day a clever performer with this "High Pitch" could do a thriving business in that overgrown country village, New York. At any rate there is the so-called, "King of Bees," a gentleman from Pennsylvania, who exhibits himself in a cage of netting filled with bees, and then sells the admiring throng a specific for bee-stings and the wounds of angry wasps. Unfortunately the only time I ever saw his majesty, some of his bee actors must have forgotten their lines, for he was thoroughly stung.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.—A "WONDERFUL PHENOMENON."—"THE INCOMBUSTIBLE SPANIARD, SENOR LIONETTO," 1803.—JOSEPHINE GIRARDELLI, 1814.—JOHN BROOKS, 1817.—W. C. HOUGHTON, 1832.—J. A. B. CHYLINSKI, 1841.—CHAMOUNI, THE RUSSIAN SALAMANDER, 1869.—PROFESSOR REL MAEUB, 1876.—RIVALLI (died 1900).

In the nineteenth century by far the most distinguished heat-resister was Chabert, who deserves and shall have a chapter to himself. He commenced exhibiting