Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/225

 "AT FIRST SKEPTICAL CONCERNING FOREIGN MAGIC"

many curious questions. Then we show a series of large photographs of the Chicago Exposition. At first they hold them upside-down, then side-wise, and even when we turn them right-side up, the puzzled furrows in the Arabs' brows are not smoothed out. The photographs mean almost nothing to them,—that is, with one exception. By dint of careful explanations we manage to convey to the mind of one of these, a vague conception of the meaning of the picture of the Ferris Wheel. The enlightened one then hastens to explain to the rest that the Ferris Wheel is one of the American railway trains, in which the Americans go whirling across their mighty continent from coast to coast. Naturally his hearers are left speechless with amazement. Taking advantage of their perturbed state of mind, we perform a few old conjuring-tricks to further mystify them. Queer facial expressions are the result of my having swallowed a five-franc piece. Then I proceed to find five-franc pieces in every