He would also present his tongue in the most obliging manner to all who wished, to pour melted lead upon it and stamp an impression of their seals." A fire-proof billed as Professor Rel Maeub, was on the programme at the opening of the New National Theater, in Philadelphia, Pa., in the spring of 1876.

If I am not mistaken the date was April 25th.

He called himself "The Great Inferno Fire-King," and his novelty consisted in having a strip of wet carpeting running parallel to the hot iron plates on which he walked barefoot, and stepping on it occasionally and back onto the hot iron, when a loud hissing and a cloud of steam bore ample proof of the high temperature of the metal.
One of the more recent fireproofs was Eugene Rivalli, whose act included, besides the usual effects, a cage of fire in which he stood completely surrounded by flames.

Rivalli, whose right name was John Watkins, died in 1900, in England.

He had appeared in Great Britain and Ireland as well as on the Continent during the later years of the 19th century.
The cage of fire has been used by a number of Rivalli's followers also, and the reader will find a full explanation of the methods employed for it in the chapter devoted to the Arcana of the Fire-eaters, to which we shall come when we have recorded the work of the master Chabert, the history of some of the heat-resisters featured on magicians' programmes, particularly in our own day, and the interest taken in this art by performers whose chief distinction was won in other fields, as notably Edwin Forrest and the elder Sothern..