Wizard of Washington Square Read Online Free PDF

magic, the less able I am to do it.”
    “Then it’s easy!” said David. “Just don’t think about it at all.”
    “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” said the Wizard. “It’s just like the story old Greywether used to tell his apprentices. For years, he said, the alchemists had been pestering him to tell them the secret of turning lead into gold. Finally he was so annoyed with them, he jokingly told them that all they had to do was to put the lead into a huge vat over a roaring fire and stir it, all the while not thinking of a pink hippocampus. Well, of course, from that moment on, not a single alchemist could stir a lead-filled cauldron without thinking of a pink hippocampus, so none of them ever were able to turn lead into gold.”
    “What’s a hippocampus?” David whispered to Leilah.
    “You’ve missed the whole point of the story,” said Leilah, who didn’t want to admit she didn’t know what a hippocampus was.
    “So,” continued the Wizard, “I’m afraid that not thinking of magic is as impossible for me as remembering correctly. I guess I was just born to be a second-class wizard.” He sighed. “Never to make magic properly. Never to have fun….”
    “Oh well, you needn’t count on magic for having fun,” said Leilah brightly. “All you have to do is play games.”
    “But I don’t know how,” said the Wizard.
    David said helpfully, “But it wouldn’t be hard to remember how to play the games you played when you were little—er, littler.”
    “I never did,” said the Wizard. “Play games, that is. Wizards don’t. Too busy learning magic.”
    “Well, from the amount of magic you learned,” said David, “you might just as well have been playing games and having fun.”
    “David, what a mean thing to say,” Leilah whispered.
    “He’s right, I’m afraid,” said the Wizard. “And I guess it’s too late to learn now.”
    “Nonsense,” said Leilah. “It’s never too late to learn how to play.” And she reached out to take the Wizard by the hand. “Let’s go.”
    “Oh, don’t touch, don’t touch, child,” said the Wizard. “The magic. Remember the magic.”
    “Oh pooh on the magic. If you can’t remember it, why should we?” said David, and he and Leilah grabbed the Wizard and hauled him quickly to his feet.
    They dragged him, his beard wagging from side to side, to the sidewalk near the Arch. There Leilah drew a hopscotch pattern on the pavement with yellow chalk. And after one time through for practice and one time through for real, the Wizard was beating them both by four squares.
    “I’m not so sure that teaching him to play was such a good idea after all,” said David, who was sometimes a sore loser. “Let’s play something else.”
    “All right,” said Leilah, who was a bit put out herself. “Let’s play swinging statues.”
    “How does that go?” asked the Wizard. His face was flushed with pleasure and the heat. He liked winning at hopscotch and hated to stop.
    “You take turns being It,” David began.
    “And,” interrupted Leilah, “It swings everyone in the game around and around. When It lets go, you have to fall in a funny position and hold it, still as a statue, while It swings the next person and looks everyone over. Whoever It chooses as being the best, becomes It in turn.”
    “Does anyone win?” asked the Wizard eagerly.
    “No,” said David. “It’s not like hopscotch.”
    “I’m not so sure…” said the Wizard. But before he could protest further, Leilah announced, “I’ll be It first.”
    She grabbed David’s hand and started to swing him, singing tunelessly, “Swinging here, swinging there, swinging statues everywhere.” At the last syllable, she let him go and he spun around and landed on his knees like a giant praying mantis. Next Leilah grabbed D. Dog and swung him, too. The terrier landed on his back and lay there, playing dead. Then she grabbed the Wizard, who started to protest about the magic. But when