With unerring skill they keep in motion many pointed knives,
always receiving them at their fall by the handles. They throw
their implements with such precision that one often sees men,
who, placing their partner against a soft board, will stand at
some distance and so pen him in with daggers that he cannot move
until some are withdrawn, marking a silhouette of his form on the
board,--yet never once does one as much as graze the skin. With
these same people the foot-jugglers are most common. These
persons, both made and female, will with their feet juggle
substances and articles that it requires several assistants to
raise.
A curious trick is given by Rousselet in his magnificent work
entitled "L'Inde des Rajahs," and quoted by Guyot-Daubes. It is
called in India the "dance of the eggs." The dancer, dressed in a
rather short skirt, places on her head a large wheel made of
light wood, and at regular intervals having hanging from it
pieces of thread, at the ends of which are running knots kept
open by beads of glass. She then brings forth a basket of eggs,
and passes them around for inspection to assure her spectators of
their genuineness. The monotonous music commences and the dancer
sets the wheel on her head in rapid motion; then, taking an egg,
with a quick movement she puts it on one of the running knots and
increases the velocity of the revolution of the wheel by
gyrations until the centrifugal force makes each cord stand out
in an almost horizontal line with the circumference of the wheel.
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