MAGIC WORDS hadn't turned silver-gray, just like grandpa's, and she felt ever so much better. Then the fairy jumped out of the window and disappeared, after saying good-bye." -- Howard Roger Garis, Johnnie and Billie Bushytail (1910) Wishy Washy Washy Wish Facts: This is a magic phrase attributed to magician David Holloway.8 Wishy Washy's Wish is the name of a novel by Walter H. Barkas. Wonder I insist upon the word 'wonders.' Oh, you are a magician! We know your power; we know that you could find gold, even were there none in the world. And, in fact, people say you make it. -- Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask (1850) Mystique: "Wonder is our response to something we experience or encounter that literally takes our breath away."9 "Wonder is a word to wonder about," wrote Dr. Lewis Thomas. "It contains a mixture of messages: something marvelous and miraculous, surprising, raising unanswerable questions about itself, making the observer wonder, even raising skeptical questions like 'I wonder about that.' Miraculous and marvelous are clues; both come from an ancient Indo-European root meaning simply to smile or laugh. Anything wonderful is something to smile in the presence of, in admiration (which, by the way, comes from the same root, along with, of all telling words, mirror)." 10 Facts: Wonder is professional magician Bill Wisch's favorite magic word. He explains: "A while back I gave a lot of thought to what makes magic different from any other performing art. Even though the word wonder can certainly be applied to any art or many situations for that matter, for obvious reasons I still find it hard to come up with a better one word definition of magic . . . wonder."11 In Literature: • "'The man who has lost his power of wonder,' wrote the scientist Albert Einstein, 'is a dead man.' Perhaps the nearest things to magic, in this sense, are dreams and fairy tales." -- Eugene Burger, Magic and Meaning (1995) 8 Emazdad, TheMagicCafe.com (200 ) 9 Msgr. Jim Lisante, "Wonder Lets Life's Magic Trickle In" (2002) 10 Lewis Thomas, "Seven Wonders" (198 ) 11 Personal correspondence (2005), Wisch-Craft.com