Page:The Chinese Boy and Girl.djvu/162



and placed upon a cylindrical chest, and from these two cylinders—each of which he repeatedly showed us as being without top or bottom and empty—he took a dinner of a dozen courses.

He called upon the baker to bring bread, the grocer to bring vegetables, and after each call he took out of the cylinders the thing called for. He finally called the wine shop to bring wine, and removing both cylinders, he exposed to the surprised children a large crock of wine.

As he brought out dish after dish, the children looked in open-mouthed wonder, and asked papa, mama or nurse, where he got them all, for they evidently were not in the cylinders. But papa saw him all the time manipulating the crock in the cylinder which he did not show, and he knew that all these things were taken from and then returned to this crock, while instead of being full of wine, he had only

158