Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 4.djvu/113

 NUTS. (194)

N Vol. II., Nos. 105 and 110, two representations of females of the Nut or Nuth tribe have been given, and with them the character and occupation of the class have been described. The present Photograph has been selected because it shows a group of Nuts, in the act of performance of legerdemain tricks, in which they are very expert. The trick under performance is a clever and pretty one. The balls on the string are made to vary in number, and finally to disappear without any apparent process; and the mode of operation is simple and unpretending, so as to disarm suspicion. On the ground are three cups, used very much on the thimble-rig principle. A white pebble or a wooden ball is employed instead of the pea. The performer takes up one cup after the other till he finds the ball. He tells it to stay where he has put it; but the ball is erratic, and appears now in one, now in another, always the least likely of the three. No one appears to touch them, and the cups are on the bare ground. The earthen pot, with a human face, is made to speak, and a variety of tricks are done with it, and with the other simple articles lying before the group. The performance is always in the open air, in a village street, before its gate, or on the gravel walk of a garden. No attempt is made at assistance by screens or other properties, and its success depends upon the real dexterity and cleverness of the operators. Many of the tricks of Nuts have been introduced lately into English exhibitions; but the Nuts' performance of the growth of mango trees, and the basket trick, are not as yet by any means equalled by their European fellow exhibitors.

The latter is made a very amusing performance; and the scene being a village street, with a crowd of people around, the performer, after telling absurd stories about his sword and his own prowess, which provoke laughter, seizes an urchin who has laughed the loudest—most likely a confederate—holds him down, and places a large basket, which is lying by, upon him. The audience is thereby satisfied that the boy, who is howling under the basket, and making frantic efforts to push it away, is really there, and that there is nothing for the basket to rest