Queens Scripturients: THE MAGIC SHOW

Hello my name is Harry Houdini, you may have heard of me? I am a magician, and an escape artist. I also have made a study of the occult, spells, incantations, and alchemy. An interesting event transpired many years ago, and it is only now in my old age that I wish to let this tale pass my lips as the people involved have passed before me.

I lived in Harlem at 278 West 113^th street. I had grabbed a hansom and hurried down Fifth Avenue arriving late for the Rothschild birthday party. They were a rich family living in their mansion at 64^th street and 5^th Avenue. I infrequently performed for children’s birthdays those days, having attained some level of success, but the family paid handsomely and I could not afford to pass it up. The children enjoyed the show immensely and were still screaming and laughing when I took my leave, disappearing in a puff of smoke. The butler let me out and as I walked down the white marble stairs stuffing Fluffy, my white rabbit, into my bag I beheld a sight that was hard to believe. Two large male lions we’re running out of Central Park by the Arsenal on Sixty Fourth street.

The zoo had started out as a menagerie of donated and abandoned exotic animals, housed at the Arsenal along with the bones of several dinosaurs, a resident paleontologist, and famous art works all in temporary status as the various museums and zoo were being built.

The pair of lions had stopped momentarily confused by the sights and sounds of Fifth Avenue. The fuming, flustered beasts with their manes flowing caught sight of a horse and carriage traveling swiftly down the avenue and started their pursuit over the smooth rounded cobblestoned street slipping as they tried to get their traction. People could be heard screaming in the park as zoo employees pursued the escapees.

I jumped into action not sure how I could help, but knowing that I must do something, i hailed a hansom. Jumping into the carriage I yelled to the driver, “Follow those Lions!” The bewildered driver took off in hot pursuit. The chase was rapid as we bumped and twisted, traversing the smooth, though convoluted avenue. The giant muscular beasts roared and ran to catch the horse while pedestrians ducked for cover, dismayed by the surreal, unlikely scene.

For a moment we were delayed in traffic, catching up to the beasts at the intersection of Forty Second Street and Fifth Avenue by the newly constructed Library. The Library was a huge structure taking over the site of the Old Croton reservoir and a melding of the Astor Library and the Lenox Library, the two separate systems that had existed in the 1890’s. With a bequest from Samuel J. Tilden and a donation of $5.2 million dollars by Andrew Carnegie, the Library was duly financed.

We came upon an ugly scene as the lions had caught their prey and were eating the dying Equus. Blood dripped from their mouths. A distraught owner sat on the curb holding his horse whip in hand, as he rocked back and forth tearing at his hair wondering how he would feed his burgeoning family.

From my bag of tricks, I pulled out an ancient book of spells and incantations that I had been studying. Remembering a chapter on Lithops Localis, a plant typed organism capable of mimicking the look of surrounding fauna and turning itself into living stone to avoid predation, I quickly looked for the excerpt. I found the section previously referenced and inhaled the knowledge. As I approached the lions one of them began to growl defending his catch. He was not in a mood to share. I slowly pulled out my wand and repeated a spell in Latin which had the effect of calming the beasts down and made them more receptive to my suggestions. There were two large, rectangular marble pedestals in the unfinished plaza before the library entrance. I grabbed the horse whip from the distraught horse owner and cracked the whip, to which the lions responded immediately. I directed them to jump onto the pedestals, which they did, and they calmly settled down. It was only years later that I found out the pair had been abandoned by P.T Barnum during hard times when he could not afford to feed them and remained at the menagerie to this day. This explained my success commanding the animals as circus cats would be quite familiar with the the whip and its commands. Next I repeated an incantation from the book intended to convert a living animal to a plant, in this case Lithops Localis or living rock. I repeated the incantation a few times without effect as the lions sat on the pedestals eating their meat. Suddenly the giant cats began to slow down in their motions and they froze in place, one on each pedestal. I had succeeded in converting animals into plants! The two leonine-shaped samples of Lithops Localis were now living rock and no longer a danger to the public.

I quickly tore the horse flesh away from the lions and washed their fur with a bucket of soapy water borrowed from a passing window washer. He gave me a strange look for the unusual request. The lions have stood there all these years to this very day.

In an amusing anecdote, a pair of stone lions had been commissioned by the city to stand at the entrance to the library on those very pedestals. Edward Clark Potter, who had been recommended to the city by the famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens was paid $8,000 dollars to model the lions. The Piccirilli Brothers had been paid $5,000 dollars to do the stone carving based on this model. The brothers were also famous for having carved the colossus of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

The Library was to be dedicated on May 23,1911 and the Piccirilli Brothers showed up with their crew to install their lions in the early morning hours of May 16,1911. Upon arrival the brothers were incensed and humiliated to find that another artist’s sculptures had been installed in place of theirs.

Without even contacting the city the brothers stormed off without removing their lions from the truck. Eventually after sitting around their studio for a few years the lions were sold to the Natural History Museum of Fredericksburg Virginia and the brothers were paid a second time for their carvings.

To this day if you arrive very early at the library and stay out of sight you can hear Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, reminiscing about that fateful day and their exciting sprint down Fifth Avenue. Mostly they ponder the possibility of a new young magician breaking the spell.

“Leo Astor, wouldn’t you love to take a quick run uptown to the zoo and have a nice fresh antelope for lunch?”

“Leo Lenox, you read my mind. We could even get it to go! But there is nothing so nice as lunch in the park! I hate it when small children badger their mothers and nannies to let them feed the remnants of their rancid hotdogs to us, from that insufferable food wagon which insists on polluting our air!”