Word: charmers
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Arthur Pryor's Band, now strictly a march recording organization, is well represented in the exchanges by dance selections. But the prize of all is a release of 1910, entitled "The Charmer." This record, a best seller in its day, was a xylophone solo, and the belles of the season all dropped their cherished copies of "Oh Mr. Dream Man--Please Let Me Dream Some More" and rushed...
...debts all round" would be to leave the United States standing the whole loss. They can never see it that way! Their Government and their Peer-subsidized press has got them as hypnotized on that point as a basketful of baby rabbits under the eye of an Indian snake charmer. Let them keep quiet and pay what they owe- which is what they always pretend that they are doing. SITWELL R. PACKARD...
Anon a cobra, no pretty worm of Nilus,* creeps out of nowhere at the feet of that most famed snake charmer of Egypt. It raises its head and a length of body clear of the ground, quite resembling a rat terrier expectantly sitting up for a titbit. As the fakir puffs his cheeks in hissing whistle, the cobra puffs its hood and lazily sways to the sibilancies...
...India snake charmers are an impoverished, filthy, untouchable lot of Jogis. With woven baskets containing their trained pythons or cobras they traipse about villages and towns. For an anna or two the charmer sets his serpent on the ground and blows through his pungi. The pungi is a bottle-shaped gourd with two reeds or bamboos inserted. One tube has finger stop-holes and emits a shrill penetrating whine. The other has no holes and gives out a drone. Snakes have no ears. But under their skin they have two primitive ear drums and through those the Indian snake feels...
Whether snakes respond instinctively to the charmer's whines and whistles is still an unsettled problem in animal psychology. Snakes have little brain and much spine. They are quick to respond to stimuli, and perhaps react directly to seductive vibrations. More probably their swaying-it is no dance-is a conditioned reflex. Charmers feed their snakes well, in India with milk, flour balls and meat (frogs). And it is doubtless with mounting hope of meals that snakes raise themselves to the fakir's minor music. Charmers who have tried their art in U. S. zoos and serpentaria have...