“And above all,” wrote Roald Dahl, “watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

I confess I tend to divide the world into two very different and distinct groups, those who believe in magic and those who do not. I have always watched with glittering eyes the whole world around , and looked for the secrets of the world in all sorts of places.

One of my favorite places was in the eyes and face and work of Lou Jacobs, one of the greatest circus clowns who ever lived, he was a sorcerer, a creator of magic that made the eyes of countless children glitter. I think he was a powerful spirit, I think he knew the secrets of the world, and he shared them with me, I traveled far and wide to see him ride around the ring with his chihuahua knucklehead.

Lou Jacobs was one of the greatest clowns in the history of the circus, he was a magician through and through.

“In the future,” said Kenneth Feld of Ringling Bros, the man who hired Jacobs, ” circus lovers will be able to open a book and look at paintings of Lou Jacobs, Master Clown. They’ll look at photographs of Lou, watch movies of Lou, and see hours of video. They’ll even be able to collect a postage stamp of Lou. But those of us who worked with him, those of us who learned from him and those of us who had loved him … we were the lucky ones. We had Lou.”

I have Lou, too. He hangs on the wall in my study,  one of those paintings of Lou Feld was talking about. I found him at Jack’s Outback on Main Street, and what are the odds of that, I go in there all the time. He could have ended up anywhere on the earth, but he came right here.

it was magic that he came her to find me, and I bought him for $200. Jacobs said the most wonderful thing about his job was that it was all about making children laugh. There was, he said, no reward greater than that.

Jacobs died some years ago, and the circus will not be making any children laugh after May. Ringling Bros. is shutting down the circus after 140 years of making children laugh and their eyes glitter.

I do believe in magic, and I also know the angry and joyless and humorless people of the world will never find it because they don’t believe in it. Whenever I forget it, I can just turn around and look at my wall.