His stay in this place will be but short,
not exceeding above two or three nights.

Good fire to keep the gentry warm.


This shows how little advance had been made
in the art in a century. Richardson had presented
practically the same programme a hundred
years before. Perhaps the exposure of
Richardson's method by his servant put an
end to fire-eating as a form of amusement for
a long time, or until the exposure had been
forgotten by the public. Powell himself,
though not proof against exposure, seems to
have been proof against its effects, for he kept
on the even tenor of his way for sixty years,
and at the end of his life was still exhibiting.

Whatever the reason, the eighteenth century
fire-eaters, like too many magicians of the
present day, kept to the stereotyped
programmes of their predecessors. A very few
did, however, step out of the beaten track and,
by adding new tricks and giving a new dress
to old ones, succeeded in securing a following
that was financially satisfactory.

In this class a Frenchman by the name of
Dufour deserves special mention, from the fact