Ride the Workhorse Till the Tail Falls Off," the "Ride the Steel Horse Till the Bride Comes Off," the "Ride the Glow Worm Till It Lights Again," the "Ride the Rainbow Till It Turns Red Again," the "Ride the Red Horse Till He Blows His Head Off," and so forth. No one would be surprised if, on his death, there were found beside him a document signed by some of his relatives in which he had promised, and in some cases sworn, to die in his tracks, with his head to the wall and his feet together. The people who had him in charge might have been of the same kidney. Or he might have felt that he had no friends. Then, why not a formal declaration that from his time in this world he would never leave it except feet first? No more airplanes. The fact was, he hated the world and he wanted to get away from it. He wanted to be in limbo, in the netherworld where he felt he belonged. Of course, in his case it was not a question of his being a criminal. At least, his crimes were minor in comparison with the crimes of many people. The worst thing he ever did, apart from getting drunk and stealing his friend's money, was something that would not have been such a terrible crime if it had been done by someone with a smaller imagination. What he did was this. At a place which shall remain nameless, he got into a fight with a man of whom the rest of the world knew nothing at all and who could have killed him without anyone knowing who he was. There had been, for many days, an enormous amount of noise and it seemed impossible that anyone would notice anything else. And then, he had this thing to do. In the small space between two big buildings there were a number of old cars parked one above another and this is what he did. He opened a window, took off the lower part of his trousers, tied a string to the middle of his member and threw his trousers out the window. The trousers fell on the roofs of the cars, bounced once on the ground and then fell down and so on till they disappeared. At that point he climbed through the open window into the inside of the car. It was a sports car and, naturally, the engine was hot and when he climbed in it exploded with frightful violence. After he had run several blocks, he climbed out and was never seen again. A few days after he vanished there were signs of him, down the streets he had taken, his pants all round the cars, and one of them was seen to be sitting on top of a light. It would seem that the owner of the car had not noticed it. For a number of days he disappeared and then there was a knock on the door of the house. A man came in and asked to see the lady of the house and said, "I have a letter here which is in your husband's handwriting." She said that her husband was dead. "In that case," he said, "I have brought you some underwear and trousers which belonged to your husband. As you have no man of your own, I am taking them home and I expect that you will make use of them." "Of course," she replied. Then she had a very strange and funny experience. The car he had used was found to have a little hole in the bonnet and some of the screws of the car radio and also the metal cover were missing. Someone remarked: "Ah! That is where his body came to. We will find some of the body there." It was not. When his friends arrived he was nowhere to be seen. For a time he was reported to be alive, and then he was reported to be dead, and now he is no more. Now, the question which may well be asked is: what sort of a man was he? He was an expert in magic, that is certain. He knew how to make gold and he could make a living metal fly about the room. So he was a magician and this is what he did, and you can read how he did it in his book which is being published now, under the title "An Open Secret." Of course, it is not my business to decide what happened to him. In all fairness, I must say that he had a wife and children. I have a good friend who told me all about it. One day this friend had gone to see him and had said, "Now, what have you got to show me?" "Have a look at these," he said, and he showed his friend the things which he had made in magic. Then he produced a packet of cigarettes, took off the end which would normally come off when the cigarette is lit, and lit it and placed it between his lips, and then put it on the table. He said, "You see what I can do. Can you do the same thing?" This friend, of course, is a gentleman of considerable wisdom and he said, "No, but I can blow out a candle with my mouth." "Well," he said, "I think that you will find that I can do more than that." And this friend thought of a number of things which he might do and he started to wonder. "What on earth have you been doing?" And he said, "Nothing." One of the men whom he met in the train who knew him said, "He was a magician. He was a very powerful magician." And they told me about this man who came out of his clothes when he got excited. It was a very amazing experience and if I told you all the things which happened, I might need to stop speaking. But I can tell you that if you met him, you might have seen him doing all sorts of things with his mouth. I am convinced that he was doing it. And also, one thing which has always perplexed me was the statement of a witness who said, "I saw him when he left the train and he put his arm out of the window and then I saw a woman's leg inside the train and I saw that it was Mrs. N, and she was not on the train." So he went home in the car and he could not find the car and he asked his friends what had happened to it. Then he got down and took the car out of the door. One friend of his had seen him and said, "I think I can give you some more information about this. You know that sometimes when a car is stolen and then a friend says, 'This is my car,' you say, 'Okay, I'll keep it.' " Then he said, "How can a car which has been stolen stay inside the train station? It has to go out, because he had to give the signal to the other car which was stolen in the same way and that is what happened." I don't know if this story is true, but I can tell you that this is what happened. He was a kind of magician, a very powerful magician. When he was a boy, in the village where he was born, there lived a very old woman. A man who lived in the village took a liking to this old woman and he went on and on till he was completely infatuated with her. And then he went to the old woman and said, "What do you want?" She asked for a piece of meat or something and he gave it to her. "And what do you want next?" "A pair of slippers." She got a pair of slippers and she gave him a pair of slippers. Then he asked her what she wanted next and she said, "It's difficult. I want a pair of slippers for Christmas." "Well, if you want a pair of slippers for Christmas, you're going to have to work hard." So she did and she worked very hard and she did all the work she could do and she was working on her slippers when he suddenly felt sorry for her. He went up to the old woman, took her by the hand and said, "Go to sleep." And when the old woman woke up, she had a pair of slippers in her hand. He did this often and it had an effect on the old woman and then she went to see the king of that village, who had a very small son, and the king saw this man coming up the street and he called the boy and he asked him, "Have you seen anyone coming along here?" "Yes," said the boy. "There was a man in the street going this way." "Well, you go and take the fastest horse in the stable and find him and bring him here," said the king. So the boy said, "Where am I going to get a horse?" and the king said, "Take the fastest horse in the stable," and that is what the boy did. The man's name was Y.Y. Y, because the three letters are the same, but people call him Y.Y. I. It is possible that his name was this and that he changed it later on. When he saw his friend in the stable with the horse, he said to him, "My dear friend, it was your mother who wanted to have you. She made me to come here and bring you to her." "What?" said his friend. "How can you be