JUGGLING AND CONJURING.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12500, 29 March 1909, Page 4

JUGGLING AND CONJURING.

Paul Cinquevalli, the. famous balancer and juggler, who is again in Australia, tells "How to succeed as a juggler," in the March number of "Cassell's Magazine." He says: — There is a great difference between juggling and conjuring. A conjuror makes you think he is doing things which he is really not doing. A juggler actually does what you see him do, and the feats he performs cannot therefore be said to be tricks. The first thing a juggler must do is to learn to work his limbs, especially his hands and arms, with immense rapidity. To acquire such rapidity of movement it is necessary to go through various exercises every day, and,, above all, to see that each day one does the exercises a little more rapids ly than the day before. Then one must train the eye to act very rapidly,. Try such a. simple exercise as juggling a couple, of tennis balls, and you will probably find that occasionally; easy as. stick exercise is, you will drop a balh ' WhyP Simply because the eye does hoi act always with sufficient quickness-, to. enable yciii to catch tli6: ball; The pall never waits; it will fall always precisely at the same i rate and in. the same way. When your eye has become trained -to act with unvarying rapidity you will never miss, catching the ball. From juggling with" two balls the learner can gradually pass tq juggling with five. When he can juggle with absolute certainty with five balls he will have acquired a very : fair facility with hand and eye, and he may proceed to learn more difficult feats. A juggler must never feel the least doubt as" to his ability to perform any of his feats. If. he does;.; it; simply means that he has not properly jmastered it. For example, when I throw.a 601 b cannon ball in the air, and catch it on, the back of my neck as it comes down, I should be instantly killed if I did not catch it in the right place. If I were an eighth of an inch out of my reckoning I should be a dead man but I feel just as certain of catching the ball properly as I am that I caii . Walk downstairs -with out falling. .. _ ; ~ It took .me a good deal of practice to learn how to do this feat -with the • cannon. ball, but once learned rb»,was never. fWgotten^ The first, time I tried it I did.it' with a wooden ball weighing only lib.. . : Perhaps the hardest thing a jbggler must learn to do is to see:things without looking at them-. This mas', seem a paradoxical statement, but.it is nevertheless; - true> Fpr example, when I. am- balancing a glass 6n. straw on my forehead, arid juggling five hats at the same time, I never look at the hats ; if I did so for-.eveh the hund T redth part, of a second, the. glass and straw . would collapse, but .1 Imow instinctively the position ,of the hats, and Can catch them and juggle with them just as easily as if I were actually looking at them. But it takes years of practice to ac- . quire what I can only call this sort of double sight. ■ Continual practice is essential even for the most -accomplished : juggler. If I were to take a month's holiday, and not to go through some feats during that period, I should probably, have to practice for a year before I could perform in public again. As a matter of fact, I practice every day for three hours at least. . . .■ ' Balancing a soft hat on its edge on one's forehead is a feat that I number among the most difficult in the three thousand or so I can perform. Yet I know many people think it rather an easy thing to do. But just try it. It took me nearly eight months' practice before I could do it.