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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 45

The Magic Glass

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The Magic Glass.

Before the wizard was a huge glass that seemed as it were filled with pure water.

"There is but little magic here," said the youth: "for it needs not necromancy to exhibit a large crystal charged with water."

"True," cried the wizard, smiling at the impetuous youth. "Look well into the glass, and tell me what thou see'st."

Even as the wizard spoke the water in the glass seemed disturbed by an unseen power, and presently small figures and shapes, dim at first, then more distinct, seem to grow up in the pure liquid.

"I see," cried the youth, "all the signs of a prosperous and a busy city. Noble buildings, elegant churches, spacious warehouses crowd the streets. The place is filled with life, and everyone seems contented, peaceful, and happy. Old and young, men and women are smiling upon every side. The father of the family seeks his fireside, and his smiling wife and children sport around. Policemen patrol the streets, but seem to have nothing to do. What place is this? Some fancy picture of my brain or some fairy city of another world?"

"Look well at it," rejoined the wizard, "and tell me do you not recognize the place?"

"It seems familiar," said the youth, "and yet 'tis strange to me. But that there are no public houses at the corners of the streets and no pawnbroker's shops in the city, I should have recognised the place as Melbourne."

"It is Melbourne 1" said the wizard.

"But how," cried the youth, when the wizard interrupted him, by telling him to look again into the glass. As he spoke the wizard poured from a phial a few drops into the vase of water. Instantly the whole scene was changed. Public-houses and pawnshops grew up on all sides; the happy, peaceful, and contented looks vanished from the faces of the inhabitants, and the policemen, who had previously walked about doing nothing, were now insufficient to cope with the drunkenness and crime that were visible on every side.

"The first was Melbourne as it should be," said the wizard; "this is Melbourne as it is."

"And what infernal magic," asked the youth, "was in those fatal drops to change a paradise into a pandemonium?"

The wizard made no answer but turned round the vial, from which he had poured the drops into the pure water, when upon the label the youth read the one word, "Alcohol!"