Night of the New Magicians (6 page)

I
t was much easier walking
down
1,652 steps than walking up. Jack and Annie walked down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down—until finally they stepped onto the ground.

Jack noticed that the two-seater bicycle was gone. “I guess those two people came and got their bike,” he said.

Jack and Annie looked around. Exhibits were covered and gates were locked. All the motion and noise of the World’s Fair had ended for the
day. The living encyclopedia had gone to sleep. Suddenly Jack felt very exhausted.

“Home?” said Annie.

Jack nodded. “Frog Creek,” he said, sighing.

Jack and Annie hurried over the bridge and across the avenue. “Those guys were really nice,” said Jack as they walked through the dark, rose-scented park.

“I know,” said Annie. “They acted like regular people. But they’ve done all those amazing things.”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “They’re like magicians in disguise.”

Jack and Annie came to the magic tree house. They climbed up the rope ladder and looked one last time out the window. The Eiffel Tower seemed to stand watch over Paris, its spotlights sweeping over the city.

Jack pulled Merlin’s letter out of his satchel. He opened it and pointed to the words
Frog Creek.
“I wish we could go—”

Before Jack could finish making the wish, he and Annie were bathed in brilliant white light. Jack looked up. One of the beams of the tower’s spotlights had come to rest on the tree house. It shined on them for a long moment.

With both hands, Annie waved wildly into the blinding light. Jack waved, too.

“Good night, magicians!” Annie shouted.

Jack laughed. Then he pointed at Merlin’s
letter again and finished his wish: “… home to Frog Creek,” he said.

The wind started to blow.

The tree house started to spin.

It spun faster and faster.

Then everything was still.

Absolutely still.

Jack opened his eyes. He and Annie were dressed in their regular clothes again. Dusky light filtered into the tree house. No time at all had passed in Frog Creek.

“That was a great trip,” Jack said softly.

“Really great,” said Annie.

Jack pulled the guide book to the 1889 Paris World’s Fair out of his backpack. He left it on the tree house floor along with Merlin’s letter. But he kept Teddy and Kathleen’s book of magic rhymes.

“So. We have three rhymes left for our fourth adventure,” he said.

“Quack, quack,” said Annie.

“Very funny,” said Jack. “Ready?”

“Yep,” said Annie. She climbed down the rope ladder, and Jack followed.

As they started walking through the darkening woods, the world felt familiar and ordinary again. “I can’t believe we just met all those guys,” said Jack. “I can’t believe I actually shook hands with Thomas Edison.”

“You mean with Alva,” said Annie.

“Yeah. Alva…. Wow,” Jack said softly.

“What do you think Merlin meant when he said that we had
lived
all their secrets, as well as
learned
them?” said Annie.

“Well, think about it,” said Jack. “We wouldn’t have gone on our mission in the first place if we didn’t have a love for adventure and responsibility—like Mr. Eiffel.”

“Right,” said Annie. “And we sure put a lot of sweat into our mission—when we climbed the stairs.”

“And we didn’t lose hope when the door of the institute was locked,” said Jack. “We stuck around until another door opened.”

“And you prepared us by reading from the research book,” said Annie, “so chance favored us when we heard someone call Thomas Edison ‘the Wizard of Menlo Park.’”

“And chance favored us when those two people lent us their bike,” said Jack.

“Actually, I don’t think that was chance,” Annie said.

“What do you mean?” said Jack.

“Did you notice that man looked more like a kid in disguise?” said Annie. “His beard and mustache looked kind of fakey.”

“I
did
notice that!” said Jack. “But there was so much going on, I didn’t have time to think about it.”

“And the woman talked in that funny, squeaky voice, and the veil of her hat covered her face,” said Annie. “And the guy told us to
spin like a whirlwind. That was a weird thing to say, but it reminded us of the rhyme in Teddy and Kathleen’s book.”

Jack nodded slowly. Then he smiled. “You think those two were actually Teddy and Kathleen?” he said.

“Maybe,” said Annie. “On our last three missions, I felt like they were with us, helping us get to the right place at the right time.”

“Next time, maybe we can catch them when they help us,” said Jack.

Annie laughed. “Yeah, we’ll try to surprise
them
for a change!”

“Good plan,” said Jack.

A bell jingled in the distance.

“Ice cream!” said Annie.

“Yep, that’s our mission now!” said Jack.

The ice cream bell jingled again. Jack and Annie ran out of the woods into the soft summer twilight.

T
he famous words of
Alexander Graham Bell
have given many people hope in the face of disappointment: “When one door closes another door opens. But we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

Bell tried many doors as he attempted to invent a device that could transmit a human request. After countless experiments, while working on his invention one day, Bell called out to his assistant in the next room: “Mr. Watson, come here.” To their surprise, Watson heard
Bell’s request over a transmitter they’d been working on. These turned out to be the first words ever heard over a telephone.

When
Thomas Alva Edison
gave his famous quote, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” he really meant it! He was always a hard worker. As a child, Edison read nearly every book in the public library. When he was only twelve, he sold snacks on trains and had another business selling vegetables. When he was thirteen, he started his own newspaper, and at fifteen he became an expert telegraph operator.

In his spare time, Edison worked on inventions. Early on, a blow to his ear and a case of scarlet fever damaged his hearing. The silence of his deafness only helped him concentrate. Eventually Edison opened a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. There he invented the first incandescent electric lightbulb and the first phonograph, or record player. A few years later, he created the first silent motion pictures. By the end of his career, Edison had patents for over
1,000 inventions. When he died in 1931, households all over America dimmed their electric lights to honor him.

By the time
Louis Pasteur
stated that “chance favors the prepared mind,” he had learned a lot about being well prepared. As a medical researcher in Paris, Pasteur studied microbes for many years. He hoped to understand how germs and infectious diseases were related. Pasteur’s hard work led to the “germ theory” in medicine. He developed a life-saving vaccine to fight rabies, and he created a process called “pasteurization” that uses heat to kill germs in food. Today the Pasteur Institute in Paris is still a very important medical research center that helps prevent and treat deadly diseases.

The French engineer
Gustave Eiffel
gave much credit for his success to his parents. He said, “From my father I inherited a taste for adventure, from my mother a love of work and responsibility.” Eiffel had many great adventures in his career. Using the new technology of
building with iron, he designed innovative bridges and viaducts. He even helped design the Statue of Liberty for New York City. But his most amazing feat was the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the tallest structure in the world until 1930.

Eiffel faced a lot of resistance to building the tower. At first, many people thought the design was terribly ugly; others were sure the tower would topple over in strong winds. But Eiffel had designed his tower so that the wind could blow safely through its open latticework. In time it became the most beloved symbol of Paris. Today the Eiffel Tower has over 6 million visitors a year.

Thomas Alva Edison actually met with Gustave Eiffel in Eiffel’s tower office during the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. Also on his visit to Paris, Edison met with Louis Pasteur at the Pasteur Institute. The only one of the four great men not in Paris that summer was Alexander Graham Bell, but a display of his new telephone invention was one of the most popular exhibits at the World’s Fair.

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Magic Tree House #36
(A Merlin Mission)
Blizzard of the Blue Moon

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Excerpt copyright ©
2006
by Mary Pope Osborne.
Published by Random House Children's Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.