Read it through once

There is a fact about the stranger that I cannot omit. He had a power, or pretended to have a power, of producing from thin air any image or picture he pleased, and setting it before one's eyes. He could make, by a motion of the hand and a slight incantation, a full-sized representation of anything he named — a tree, a river, a whole landscape — and it would remain visible for as long as he willed. It was not illusion in the common sense; it had substance and color and life, though no one could touch it. We children owned it as the most wonderful thing in the world.