"Strolling among the playbills, he confesses that it was hard to edit down his collection to 100 pieces, and he points out the hard-to-find broadside hawking the arrival of the first elephant in America in 1797, a rare playbill for renowned early-18th-century magician Isaac Fawkes, and a circa-1620 piece that beautifully depicts armless dulcimer player Pietro Stadelmann plucking his instrument with tiny feet. And then there's Jay's hero – and e-mail namesake – Mathew Buchinger, the armless, legless calligrapher, magician, trick bowler, and, according to the 1726 bill, 'greatest German living.'"

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