Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/65

 RICHARD POTTER.

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��cooked. He could dance on eggs and not break them. He could cause a tur- key-cock to draw a mill-log across the platform. He could cause<any lady in the audience to find a peeping chicken in her pocket ; or gentleman a " bumblebee" imprisoned in the handkerchief in the top of his hat, without himself leaving the stage or their leaving their seats. All these and other feats equally impos- sible, the writer has heard related of Potter, by persons who declared they had seen him do them.

Of the nationality of Richard Potter various statements have been made, widely circulated and believed, and noth- ing certain is known. Of any part of his early history no more than probabili- ties can be reached, by piecing together parts of various stories, of which he ap- pears to have been the author.

He was commonly called "Black Pot- ter," and had the appearance of a mulat- to. The story was currently reported, in the vicinity of his own home in An- dover, that he was the son of a negro woman in Boston, and that Benjamin Franklin was his father. That the moth- er was a servant in a Boston family, and that, after the birth of the child, Frank- lin furnished her a home in a back street behind the State House, where Potter lived till he was ten years of age. Ste- phen Fellows of Grafton, who was Pot- ter's assistant during the last years of his travels, and. with Potter's son, succeed- ed to the business, and who now possess- es all of the great magician's kit there is in existence, assured the writer that Pot- ter told him this story in confidence. It is entirely probable; and that Potter told it in one of his fits of humor, to par- ry enquiries as to his early life, concern- ing which he appears to have been al- ways reticent. Nevertheless, the story became current, and was confidently be- lieved by many who ought to have known better.

The folly of the assertion is seen in the fact that Franklin was not in America after November or December 1776, till 1785; and was not probably in Boston after his departure to England, in 1764, until after the latter date ; while Rich-

��ard Potter, if the date and age on his tomb-stone are correct, was born in 1783, at which time Frank liu was 77 years old.

Potter told Fellows that he was at ten years of age, picked up by a ship-captain, and carried as a cabin boy to London. Being there turned adrift upon the city, he fell in with a travelling circus, with which, in the capacity of a servant boy, he remained four or five years, visiting all the large towns and cities of England ; that the circus then came to America, and was the first that ever exhibited in the United States; then he returned to America with the company, being then past fifteen years of age, and continued in that service two or three years, dur- ing which time he acquired from his em- ployers and associates the knowledge and practice of the art he afterwards pur- sued ; and that, when about eighteen years old, he left the circus and set up business for himself as a magician and ventriloquist.

There was, however, an opinion widely prevalent, within the territory of his most freqent exhibitions, that Potter was a native of the East Indies. It was con- fidently affirmed, by many persons who professed to be acquainted with him, that he had himself so reported. And that he had so stated is rendered proba- ble, by the currency of this story among those who had witnessed his perform- ances, and held desultory conversation with him before tavern fires, in places widely remote from each other. The writer has heard it repeated, with varia- tions, but with a general agreement of points, in Maine, New Hampshire, Ver- mont. Massachusetts and New York.

Among his townsmen in Andover, the general understanding seems to have been that he was a native of one of the West India islands. But his complexion and physiognomy it was said, by those whose acquaintance with both races en- abled them to judge, indicated the pres- ence of Asiatic rather than of African blood. And among many, who had nev- er heard of the Franklin story, though living in sections far apart, it was firmly believed that he was the son of an Eng- lishman by a Hindu mother. This was

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