they were. I had never watched things before and it made me feel very
curious. Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be
scientific. I keep saying to myself, What is it? What is it? It s
something. It can t be nothing! I don t know its name so I call it
Magic. I have never seen the sun rise but Mary and Dickon have and from
what they tell me I am sure that is Magic too. Something pushes it up
and draws it. Sometimes since I ve been in the garden I ve looked up
through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being
happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making
me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things
out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees,
flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it
must be all around us. In this garden in all the places. The Magic in
this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a
man. I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some
and put it in myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I
don t know how to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it
and calling it perhaps it will come. Perhaps that is the first baby way
to get it. When I was going to try to stand that first time Mary kept
saying to herself as fast as she could, You can do it! You can do it!
and I did. I had to try myself at the same time, of course, but her
Magic helped me and so did Dickon s. Every morning and evening and as
often in the daytime as I can remember I am going to say, Magic is in
me! Magic is making me well! I am going to be as strong as Dickon, as
strong as Dickon! And you must all do it, too. That is my experiment
Will you help, Ben Weatherstaff?
Aye, aye, sir! said Ben Weatherstaff. Aye, aye!
If you keep doing it every day as regularly as soldiers go through
drill we shall see what will happen and find out if the experiment
succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking
about them until they stay in your mind forever and I think it will be
the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you
it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things.
I once heard an officer in India tell my mother that there were fakirs
who said words over and over thousands of times, said Mary.
I ve heard Jem Fettleworth s wife say th same thing over thousands o
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