tly near and the British
Museum was within easy walking distance. The new member was a favorite
with all the family, which consisted of three daughters besides the
father and mother.

Rizal's youthful interest in sleight-of-hand tricks was still
maintained. During his stay in the Philippines he had sometimes amused
his friends in this way, till one day he was horrified to find that
the simple country folk, who were also looking on, thought that he
was working miracles. In London he resumed his favorite diversion, and
a Christmas gift of Mrs. Beckett to him, "The Life and Adventures of
Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist," indicated the interest his friends
took in this amusement. One of his own purchases was "Modern Magic,"
the frontispiece of which is the sphinx that figures in the story of
"El Filibusterismo."

It was Rizal's custom to study the deceptions practiced upon the
peoples of other lands, comparing them with those of which his
own countrymen had been victims. Thus he could get an idea of the
relative credulity of different peoples and could also account
for many practices the origin of which was otherwise less easy to
understand. His investigations were both in books and by personal
research. In quest of these experiences he one day chanced to visit
a professional phrenologist; the bump-reader was a shrewd guesser,
for he dwelt especially upon Rizal's aptitude for learning languages
and advised him to take up the study of them.

This interest in languages, shown in his childish ambition to be
like Sir John Bowring, made Rizal a congenial companion of a still
more distinguished linguist, Doctor Reinhold Rost, the librarian of
the India Office. The Raffles Library in Singapore now owns Doctor
Rost's library, and its collection of grammars in seventy languages
attests the wide range of the studies of this Sanscrit scholar.

Doctor Rost was born and educated in Germany, though naturalized
as a British subject, and he was a man of great musical taste. His
family sometimes formed an orchestra, at other times a glee club, and
furnished all the necessary parts from its own members. Rizal was a
frequent visitor, usually spending his Sundays in athletic exercises
with the boys, for he quickly became proficient in the English sports
of boxing and cricket. While resting he would converse with the father,
or chat with the daughters of the home. All the children had literary
tastes, and one, Daisy, presented him with a c