pages: practicalmagicia00harr.pdf, 85
This data as json
path | page | folder | text |
---|---|---|---|
practicalmagicia00harr.pdf | 85 | THE PRACTICAL MAGICIAN. 75 toxication, and dressed himself anew, M. Alexandre then betook himself. himself to the mansion of the nobleman to whom he had engaged On the following day the fashionable newspapers gave a de- tailed account of the grand party at his Grace the Duke of----'s, and culogized to the skies the entertaining performances of M. Alexandre, who, they said, had surpassed himself on this occas- sion. Some days afterwards, the Lord Mayor encountered M. Alexandre. Ah, how are you?" said his lordship. " Very well, my lord," was the reply. " Our newspapers are pretty pieces of veracity, said his lordship. "Have you seen the Courier of the other day? Why, it makes you out to have cxhibit- cd in great style last Thursday night at his Grace of- "It has but told the truth, " said the mimic. 'What? impossible!" cried the Mayor. " You do not remember, then, the state into which you unfortunately got at the Mansion House? And thereupon the worthy magistrate detailed to the ventriloquist the circumstances of his inotxication, and the care that had been taken with him, with other points of the case. M. Alexandro heard his lordship to an cnd, and then confessed the stratagem which he had played off, and the cause of it. " I had promised," said Alexandre, "to be with his Grace at half-past ten. I had also promised not to leave you till you your- self considered it fit time. I kept my word in both cases-you know the way.' The civic functionary laughed heartily, and on the following evening Alexandre made up for his trick by making the Mansion House ring with laughter till daylight. Many anecdotes are told respecting M. Alexandre's power of assuming the faces of other people. At Abbotsford, during a visit there, he actually sat to a sculptor five times in the char- acter of a noted clergyman, with whose real features the sculp- tor was well acquainted. When the sittings were closed and the bust modelled, the mimic cast off his wig and assumed dress, and appeared with his own natural countenance, to the terror almost of the sculptor, and to the great amusement of Sir Walter and others who had been in the secret. Of this most celebrated ventriloquist it is related that on one occasion he was passing along the Strand, when a friend de- sired a specimen of his abilities. At this instant a load of hay was passing along near Temple Bar, when Alexandre called atten- tion to the suffocating cries of a man in the centre of the hay. A crowd gathered round and stopped the astonished carter, and demanded why he was carrying a fellow-creature in his hay. The complaints and cries of the smothered man now became painful, and there was every reason to believe that he was dying. The crowd, regardless of the stoppage to the traffic, instantly proceeded to unload the hay into the street, The smothered |