Now we have Joe with a little blazing taper concealed in his cupped hands, advancing to the candle he first blew out.  He placed his hands around this, lighted the wick from the taper, which he at once crushed between his fingers, and the trick was done.

The candle was lighted, the remains of the little taper were concealed between Joe’s fingers, and it looked as though he had really carried fire in his hands.  The quickness with which he pinched out the candle flame, and also smothered the taper after he had used it, prevented him from being burned in the slightest.  But it is best for a boy unpracticed and without the dexterity of a professional prestidigitator not to undertake to play with fire.

Joe Strong believed in doing his tricks and acts artistically and elaborately.  He had watched other performers “dress their act,” and he had often improved on what even stage veterans had done.  His apprenticeship had been a stern but good one.

And now he was going to introduce something novel in his fire-eating tricks, but he was also going to add to that.  He had read considerable of late about the fire-eating tricks of the old “magicians” and had delved into many curious old books.  Now he was going to give his audience some of this information.

“There is a trick in everything,” said Joe, as he faced his audience in readiness for the fire-eating act.  “If I told you that I actually swallowed blazing fire, any physician would know that I was not telling the truth.  I do not really eat the fire.  I only seem to do so.  But if in doing so I can deceive you into thinking I do, and you are thrilled and amused, you get your money’s worth, I earn mine, and we are all satisfied.  So don’t be alarmed by what you see.

“The resistance of the human body to heat is greater than many persons suppose,” said Joe.  “And there is a vast difference between wet heat and dry heat.  Water, above one hundred and fifty degrees, would be unbearable.  It would really burn you badly.  Water, as you know, boils at two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit.  But before this point is reached it is capable of ending life.

“Dry heat, however, is different.  Men have frequently borne without permanent discomfort dry heat up to three hundred degrees.  This heat is often reached in the drying rooms of oilcloth and oiled silk factories.

“Now the fire I handle is dry heat.  I would no more think of pouring boiling water over my hands than I would of taking poison.  And yet I will show you that I can thrust my hand into a blazing fire and suffer no harm.

“In an old book I read that to enable one to thrust one’s hands into the fire all you had to do was to anoint them with a mixture of bol armenian, quicksilver, camphor and spirits of wine.  I should prefer to leave that mixture alone, though in the book it is said that if one puts that mixture on his hands he may handle boiling lead.