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Then came the rush from the outside. It was almost magical the change that occurred in one day. The place became suddenly alive with strangers from Leeson Butte and Bay Creek, and even farther afield. Legitimate traders came to spy out the land. Loafers came in and sat about waiting for developments. Gamblers, suave, easy, ingratiating, foregathered and started the ball of high stakes rolling.
It is so with the Laplanders, of whom Tornoeus reports that of those instructed in the magical art 'only a few are capable of it. 'Some, he says, 'are naturally magicians. And this fact is emphatically insisted upon by the mystics of our own middle ages, who state that a man must be born a magician; in other words, that the gift is constitutional, though developed by practice and art.
In either case the peltry would be a mere veil hiding the true individuality for a while. It would thus acquire a distinct magical efficacy; so that when deprived of it, the maiden would be unable to effect the change. A remarkable instance of this occurs in an Arab saga. There a man, at Algiers, puts to death his three daughters, who afterwards appear to a guitar-player and dance to his playing.
Ben thrust his hand into his trousers pocket and presently brought out two little pieces of cardboard on which the magical words were written which would take him and his sister to the school feast. "There," he said; "it's all right as right as can be." "But that isn't your name, Ben; it's Tom Minchin, Tom Minchin and a number."
Charred sticks of the Judas fire, as it is popularly called, are supposed to possess a magical and healing virtue; hence the people take them home with them, and even scuffle with each other for the still glowing embers in order to carry them, still glimmering, to their houses and so obtain "the light" or "the holy light."
And somehow the simple melody helped to conceal the meagreness of the childish words. Everywhere, from sky and lawn and solemn trees, the Past came softly in and listened too. There's a Fairy that hides in the beautiful eyes Of children who treat her well; In the little round hole where the eyeball lies She weaves her magical spell.
From this disease of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence also, if with that same end of perverted knowledge magical arts be enquired by. Hence also in religion itself, is God tempted, when signs and wonders are demanded of Him, not desired for any good end, but merely to make trial of.
The long, slim, tapering fingers, whose nerves, tingling sensitively at the tips, were as eyes to Jimmie Dale, those fingers that, to the Gray Seal, were like some magical "open sesame" to the most intricate safes and vaults, felt along the window sill, and, from the sill, made a circuit of the sash.
Then he came to her, and she announced his arrival to all the people, who assembled and welcomed him. He abode there; and when his wife's relatives complained that he did not go and get food, he obtained it in abundance by the exercise of magical powers; and so they lived happy ever after. Now let us turn to the Malagasy tale of the way in which Andrianòro obtained a wife from heaven.
The victories of the rebels are like the magical combat of Apuleius, who thinking he had slain three of his enemies, found them at last but a triumvirate of bladders. Such, and so empty are the triumphs of a diurnal, but so many impostumated fancies, so many bladders of their own blowing. The "Surfeit to A.B.C." in 1656, was a look of Characters.
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