MAGIC
Stage Tricks and Scientific Fun
Including photo tricks

COMPILED AND EDITED BY
ALBERT A. HOPKINS
EDITOR OF THE “SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN CYCLOPEDIA OF RECEIPTS, NOTES AND QUERIES,” ETC.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
HENRY RIDGELY EVANS
AUTHOR OF “HOURS WITH THE GHOSTS; OR, XIX. CENTURY WITCHCRAFT,” ETC.

WITH FOUR HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON AND COMPANY
LIMITED
St. Dunstan’s House,
Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C.
1897

Copyright, 1897, by
MUNN & CO.
NEW YORK
ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL, LONDON, ENGLAND

All rights reserved

The articles used from the Scientific American and the Scientific American Supplement
are copyrighted

Printed in the U. S. A. by
J. J. Little & Co., New York City

[v]

It is believed that the present work occupies a unique field in the extensive literature of magic. There are already a large number of treatises on natural magic and legerdemain, but in most of them very little attention has been given to the exposé of stage illusions, which are of great interest as they are so largely based on ingenious applications of scientific principles. Optics, mechanics, sound, and electricity have all been pressed into service by the fin de siècle prestidigitateur. In the present work great attention has been paid to elaborate tricks of this nature, and in many cases the exposés have been obtained from the prestidigitateurs themselves. In the first few chapters many of the best illusions of Robert-Houdin, Dr. Lynn, Professor Pepper, Bautier de Kolta, Heller, Herrmann, Maskelyne and Cooke, and Kellar will be found clearly explained.

Conjuring tricks have been by no means neglected, but the number of them which are given has been limited, owing to the fact that many of the books on magic have gone into this subject quite extensively. Ventriloquism, shadowgraphy, mental magic, etc., will also be found treated in the present work.

The chapters relating to “Ancient Magic” take up the temple tricks of the ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman thaumaturgists, as well as a number of automata which are very interesting in view of their very early epoch. It is believed this will be found a particularly entertaining feature of the book.

There is always a great charm about the stage, and the methods of producing the effects which give realism to the drama. The chapters devoted to “Theatrical Science” will be found to contain a very large number of effects and illusions, many of which are here presented for the first time. Thus an entire opera, “Siegfried,” is taken up, and the methods by which the wonderful effects are obtained are fully illustrated and described. Such amusements as cycloramas, the nautical arena, and fireworks with dramatic accessories are not neglected.

The chapters on “Automata” and “Curious Toys” describe many interesting tricks and mechanisms of an amusing nature.

The last few chapters of the book deal with “Photographic Diversions,” and here will be found some of the most curious and interesting tricks and deceptions which may be performed by the aid of photography. The practical side of scientific photography will also be found represented. The chapter[vi] on “Chronophotography” describes the photography of moving objects of all kinds, and shows how the results obtained are of value to the savant. The projection of moving pictures upon a screen is thoroughly treated, a number of different forms of the apparatus being described.

The introduction is a unique feature of the work, being written by Mr. Henry Ridgely Evans, of Washington, D. C., author of “Hours with the Ghosts; or, Nineteenth Century Witchcraft.” It contains a brief but remarkably complete history of magic art from the earliest times to the present date, especial attention being given to amusing incidents in the careers of celebrated necromancers. This Introduction will be found one of the most entertaining parts of the present book. Mr. Evans has also contributed two chapters—one on “Shadowgraphy,” or “Treweyism,” as it has been called, in honor of M. Félician Trewey, the classic exponent of the art; the other on “Mental Magic,” or second-sight experiments. The chapter on “Shadowgraphy” is not only interesting because of the exposé of the art of theatrical silhouette-making, but on account of the sketch of the life and adventures of M. Trewey, who is a personal friend of the writer. Mr. Evans is also the compiler of the excellent Bibliography which concludes the book. Though this Bibliography makes no pretense to absolute completeness, it is believed to be more extensive than any other bibliography of the subject, and it will be found of great value to the student of psychology, as well as to the student of modern magic. Other acknowledgments are due to Mr. William E. Robinson, the well-known prestidigitateur, for many suggestions and favors and for important help in connection with the Bibliography; Mr. Robinson having a very remarkable collection of books upon magic, which he has gathered at home and abroad during a long period. We are also indebted to Mr. H. J. Burlingame, of Chicago, for permission to use extracts from his writings and for assistance in the Bibliography.

The matter for the present work is very largely compiled from articles which have appeared in the “Scientific American” and the “Scientific American Supplement,” with the addition of much material hitherto unpublished. Especial acknowledgments are due to our French and German contemporaries, particularly “La Nature.” The section on “Ancient Magic” is taken almost wholly from the articles of Colonel A. de Rochas in “La Nature.” These articles were afterwards amplified by him and published in a most interesting book entitled “Les Origines de la Science.” It is hoped that the present work will prove entertaining to those who are fond of the art magique.

New York, September, 1897.

[vii]

[1]

MAGIC:
STAGE ILLUSIONS AND SCIENTIFIC DIVERSIONS,
INCLUDING TRICK PHOTOGRAPHY.

By Henry Ridgely Evans.

Far back into the shadowy past, before the building of the pyramids, magic was a reputed art in Egypt, for Egypt was the “cradle of magic.” The magicians of Egypt, according to the Bible chronicle, contended against Aaron, at the court of Pharaoh. The Hebrew prophet “cast down his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast down every man his rod and they became serpents: but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.” [Exodus vii. 10, 11, 12.]

The late Robert Heller, prestidigitateur, traveler in the Orient, and skeptic, once told me that he had seen this feat performed in Cairo many times by the Dervishes. The rods actually were serpents and hypnotized to such an extent as to become perfectly stiff and rigid. When thrown upon the earth and recalled to life by sundry mystic passes and strokes, they crawled away alive and hideous as ever. Said Heller: “It was in the open air that I saw this strange feat performed. Transferred to the gloomy audience chamber of some old palace, where the high roof is supported by ponderous stone columns painted with hieroglyphics, where rows of black marble sphinxes stare at you with unfathomable eyes, where the mise en scène is awe-inspiring—this trick of the rods turning into serpents becomes doubly impressive, and indeed to the uninitiated a miracle.”

In the British Museum is an Egyptian papyrus, which contains an account of a magical séance given by a certain Tchatcha-em-ankh before King Khufu, B.C. 3766. In this manuscript it is stated of the magician: “He knoweth how to bind on a head which hath been cut off, he knoweth how to make a lion follow him as if led by a rope, and he knoweth the number of the stars of the[2] house (constellation) of Thoth.” The decapitation trick is thus no new thing, while the experiment performed with the lion, undoubtedly a hypnotic feat, shows hypnotism to be old.

The art of natural magic, then, dates back to the remotest periods of antiquity. It was an art cultivated by the Egyptian, Chaldean, Jewish, Roman, and Grecian priesthoods, being used by them to dupe the ignorant masses. Weeping and bleeding statues, temple doors that flew open with thunderous sound and apparently by supernatural means, and perpetual lamps that flamed forever in the tombs of holy men, were some of the thaumaturgic feats of the Pagan priests. Heron, a Greek mechanician and mathematician, who lived in the second century before Christ, wrote several interesting treatises on automata and magical appliances, used in the ancient temples. Colonel A. De Rochas, in an interesting work, Les Origines de la Science, has given in detail Heron’s accounts of these wonderful automata and experiments in natural magic. St. Hippolytus, one of the Fathers of the early Christian Church, also described and exposed in his works many of these wonders.

Magic is divided, according to old writers on the occult, into: White magic, Black magic, and Necromancy. Modern magic, or conjuring, is divided by Robert-Houdin into five classes, as follows:

In the Middle Ages magic was greatly in vogue and we read strange stories of ghosts, goblins, and gnomes in the literature of that period. Shriveled old women were burned at the stake for the crime of witchcraft, monks in their gloomy cells wrestled with Satan and the powers of darkness, and grimy alchemists toiled day and night over the red fires of their furnaces, seeking in vain for the talismanic philosopher’s stone and wondrous elixir of life. With the aid of the concave mirror, magicians of the period were able to produce very fair ghost illusions to gull a susceptible public. Benvenuto Cellini chronicles one in his fascinating autobiography.

Cellini, as guileless as a child in matters of science, desiring to study sorcery, applied to a Sicilian priest who was a professed dabbler in the occult[3] art. One dark night they repaired to the ruins of the Coliseum, at Rome; the monk described a circle on the ground and placed himself and the great goldsmith within its mystic outlines; a fire was built, intoxicating perfumes cast on it, and soon an impenetrable smoke arose. The man of the cowl then waved his wand in the air, pronounced sundry cabalistic words, and legions of demons were seen dancing in the air, to the great terror of Cellini. The story of this spirit séance reads like an Arabian tale, but it is easily explainable. The priest had a brother confederate concealed among the ruins, who manipulated a concave mirror, by means of which painted images were thrown on the smoke. Later on Nostradamus conjured up the vision of the future King of France for the benefit of the lovely Marie dé Médicis. This illusion was accomplished by the aid of mirrors adroitly secreted amid hanging draperies.

The history of magic would be incomplete without a sketch of Cagliostro, the arch-necromancer of the eighteenth century, who filled all Europe with his fame. Novels and plays have been founded on his strange career, as witness Goethe’s “Grand Cophta” and Alexander Dumas’ “Memoirs of a Physician.” Thomas Carlyle has remorselessly dissected the character of Cagliostro in an immortal essay, “Count Cagliostro,” which makes fascinating reading. Cagliostro like Nostradamus, and others of that ilk, as the Scotch say, was a pretender to magic and sorcery. He manufactured elixirs of life, raised the shades of the illustrious dead, pretty much after the fashion of our modern spirit mediums; told fortunes, predicted lucky numbers in the lottery, transmuted metals, and founded occult lodges of Egyptian Masonry for the regeneration of mankind. Joseph Balsamo—for such was the Count’s real name—was born of poor parents at Palermo, Sicily, in the year 1743. He received the rudiments of an education, and a smattering of chemistry, at a neighboring monastery, and then started out to fleece mankind. He began by forging theater tickets, after that a will; then he robbed a goldsmith named Marano of a sum of money. Balsamo pretended that a secret treasure lay buried in a certain rocky chasm just outside the city of Palermo, and that he, for a consideration, was able to unearth the gold by means of certain magical incantations. Poor Marano like a susceptible gudgeon swallowed the bait, hook and all, paid the contingent fee, and accompanied by the amateur sorcerer (it was Balsamo’s first attempt in the necromantic line) paid a visit on a certain dark night to the lonely spot where the treasure lay hid from mortal gaze. Joseph drew a magic circle of phosphorus on the earth, pronounced some spells in a peculiar gibberish known only to himself, which he denominated Arabic, and bade the goldsmith dig away for dear life. Marano went vigorously to work with pick and spade. Suddenly terrific yells were heard, whereupon a legion of[4] devils (Joseph’s boon companions with cork-blackened visages) rushed from behind the rocks, pounced upon the goldsmith, and nearly beat him to death with their pitchforks. The enchanter, in order to escape the vengeance of the furious Marano, was compelled to flee his native city. In company with a Greek, Althotas, he visited various places—Greece, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Rhodes, Malta, Naples, Venice and Rome. According to his own account, he studied alchemy at Malta in the laboratory of Pinto, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta and St. John. At Rome he married a beautiful girl, Lorenza Feliciani, daughter of a girdle maker, who proved of great assistance to him in his impostures. They travelled over Europe in a coach-and-four with a retinue of servants garbed in gorgeous liveries. Balsamo changed his name to the high-sounding title of the Comte de Cagliostro, and scattered money right and left. “At Strasbourg,” says one of his biographers, “he reaped an abundant harvest by professing the art of making old people young; in which pretension he was seconded by his wife, Lorenza Feliciani, who, though only twenty years of age, declared that she was sixty and that she had a son a veteran in the Dutch service.” Cagliostro also pretended to be of a great age, and solemnly declared that he had hobnobbed with Alexander and Julius Cæsar; that he was present at the burning of Rome under Nero and was an eye-witness of the crucifixion of Christ. Cardinal de Rohan, of France, who became a firm believer in the pretensions of the charlatan, entertained him in Paris, introducing him to that gay world of the Old Régime which went out forever with the French Revolution. This was in 1785. All Paris went wild over the enchanter, and thronged to his magical soirées at his residence in the Rue St. Claude. Cagliostro coined money in the French capital with his spurious Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry, which promised to its votaries the length of life of the Noachites, and superhuman power over nature and her laws. Imbert Saint-Amand, the interesting author of “Marie Antoinette and the End of the Old Régime,” says (Scribner Edition): “The mania for the supernatural, the rage for the marvelous, prevailed in the last years of the eighteenth century, which had wantonly derided every sacred thing. Never were the Rosicrucians, the adepts, sorcerers, and prophets so numerous and so respected. Serious and educated men, magistrates, courtiers, declared themselves eye-witnesses of alleged miracles.... When Cagliostro came to France, he found the ground prepared for his magical operations. A society eager for distractions and emotions, indulged to every form of extravagance, necessarily welcomed such a man and hailed him as its guide. Whence did he come? What was his country, his age, his origin? Where did he get those extraordinary diamonds which adorned his dress, the gold which he squandered so freely? It was all a mystery.... So far as was known, Cagliostro had no resources, no letter of credit, and yet he lived in luxury. He treated and cured the poor without pay, and not satisfied with restoring them to health, he made them large presents of money. His generosity to the poor, his scorn for[5] the great, aroused universal enthusiasm. The Germans, who lived on legends, imagined that he was the Wandering Jew.... Speaking a strange gibberish, which was neither French nor Italian, with which he mingled a jargon which he did not translate, but called Arabic, he used to recite with solemn emphasis the most absurd fables. When he repeated his conversation with the angel of light and the angel of darkness, when he spoke of the great secret of Memphis, of the Hierophant, of the giants, the enormous animals, of a city in the interior of Africa ten times as large as Paris, where his correspondents lived, he found a number of people ready to listen and believe him.”

The interior of Africa was an excellent place in which to locate all these marvels. Since no traveler in that age of skepticism and credulity had ever penetrated into the mysterious land of Ham, it was impossible to deny the Munchausen-like stories of the magician. All this bears a close analogy to the late Madame Blavatsky and her Tibetan Mahatmas. Cagliostro, like all successful and observant wizards, was keenly alive to the effects of mise en scène in his necromantic exhibitions; he was a strong believer in the spectacular. To awe his dupes with weird and impressive ceremonies, powerfully to stimulate their imaginations—ah, that was the great desideratum! His séance-room was hung with somber draperies, and illuminated with wax lights in massive silver candlesticks which were arranged about the apartment in mystic triangles and pentagons.

Says Saint-Amand: “As a sorcerer he had a cabalistic apparatus. On a table with a black cloth, on which were embroidered in red the mysterious signs of the highest degree of the Rosicrucians, there stood the emblems: little Egyptian figures, old vials filled with lustral waters, and a crucifix, very like, though not the same as the Christian’s cross; and there too Cagliostro placed a glass globe full of clarified water. Before the globe he used to place a kneeling seer; that is to say, a young woman who, by supernatural powers, should behold the scenes which were believed to take place in water within the magic globe.

“Count Beugnot, who gives all the details in his Memoirs, adds that for the proper performance of the miracle the seer had to be of angelic purity, to have been born under a certain constellation, to have delicate nerves, great sensitiveness, and, in addition, blue eyes. When she knelt down, the geniuses were bidden to enter the globe. The water became active and turbid. The seer was convulsed, she ground her teeth, and exhibited every sign of nervous excitement. At last she saw and began to speak. What was taking place that very moment at hundreds of miles from Paris, in Vienna or Saint Petersburg, in America or Pekin, as well as things which were going to occur only some weeks, months, or years later, she declared that she saw distinctly in the globe. The operation had succeeded; the adepts were transported with delight.”

Cagliostro became involved in the affair of the Diamond Necklace, and was thrown into the Bastille. Though eventually liberated, he was compelled to[6] leave Paris. He made one remarkable prediction: That the Bastille would one day be razed to the ground. How well that prophecy was realized, history relates. In the year 1789 the enchanter was in Rome, at the inn of the Golden Sun. He endeavored to found one of his Egyptian Lodges in the Eternal City, but the Holy Inquisition pounced down upon him, adjudged him guilty of the crime of Freemasonry—a particularly heinous offense in Papal Territory—and condemned him to death. The sentence, however, was commuted by the Pope to perpetual imprisonment in the gloomy fortress of San Leon, Urbino. The manner of his death, nay the day of his death, is uncertain, but it is supposed to have taken place one August morning in the year 1790. The beautiful Lorenza Feliciani, called by her admirers the “Flower of Vesuvius,” ended her days in a convent, sincerely repentant, it is said, of her life of impostures.

With Cagliostro, so-called genuine magic died. Of the great pretenders to occultism he was the last to win any great fame, although there has been a feeble attempt to revive thaumaturgy in this nineteenth century by Madame Blavatsky. Science has laughed away sorcery, witchcraft, and necromancy. Prior to Cagliostro’s time a set of men arose calling themselves faiseurs, who practiced the art of sleight-of-hand, allied to natural magic. They gave very amusing and interesting exhibitions. Very few of these conjurers laid claim to occult powers, but ascribed their jeux, or tricks, to manual dexterity, mechanical and scientific effects. These magicians soon became popular.

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century we hear of Jonas, Androletti, Carlotti, Pinetti, Katerfelto, Philadelphus Philadelphia, Rollin, Comus I. and II. Pinetti, when he arrived in London in 1784, displayed the following advertisement: “The Chevalier Pinetti with his Consort will exhibit most wonderful, stupendous, and absolutely inimitable, mechanical, physical, and philosophical pieces, which his recent deep scrutiny in those sciences, and assiduous exertions, have enabled him to invent and construct; among which Chevalier Pinetti will have the special honor and satisfaction of exhibiting various experiments of new discovery, no less curious than seemingly incredible, particularly that of Madame Pinetti being seated in one of the front boxes, with a handkerchief over her eyes, and guessing at everything imagined and proposed to her by any person in the company.” Here we have the first mention of the second-sight trick, which in the hands of latter-day artists has become so popular. Houdin rediscovered it, passed it on to Robert Heller who improved it, and at the present time the conjurer Kellar makes it his pièce de résistance. Rollin had a romantic career. He accumulated a fortune at conjuring, and purchased the chateau of Fontenay-aux-Roses, in the department of the Seine. Says H. J. Burlingame, an interesting writer on magic:[7] “Rollin incurred the suspicions of the Committee of Public Safety in 1793, and suffered death by the guillotine. On the warrant for his execution being read to him, he turned to those about him, and observed, ‘This is the first paper I cannot conjure away.’ Rollin was the grandfather of the late political celebrity of that name, who was minister of the interior in the provisional government of France of 1848.”

Comus II., who played in London in the year 1793, gave a curious exhibition of conjuring tricks and automata. His programme announced that the Great Comus would present “various uncommon experiments with his ‘Enchanted Horologium,’ ‘Pyxidus Literarum,’ and many curious operations in ‘Rhabdology,’ ‘Stenaganagraphy,’ and ‘Phylacteria,’ with many wonderful performances of the grand ‘Dodecahedron,’ also ‘Chartomantic Deceptions’ and ‘Kharamatic Operations.’ To conclude with the performance of the ‘Teretopæst Figure and Magical House’; the like never seen in this kingdom before, and will astonish every beholder.”

In the height of the French Revolution, when the guillotine reeked with blood and the ghastly knitting-women sat round it counting the heads as they fell into the basket, a Belgian optician, named Etienne Gaspard Robertson, arrived in Paris, and opened a wonderful exhibition in an abandoned chapel belonging to the Capuchin convent. The curiosity-seekers who attended these séances were conducted by ushers down dark flights of stairs to the vaults of the chapel and seated in a gloomy crypt shrouded with black draperies and pictured with the emblems of mortality. An antique lamp, suspended from the ceiling, emitted a flame of spectral blue. When all was ready a rain and wind storm, with thunder accompanying, began. Robertson extinguished the lamp and threw various essences on a brazier of burning coals in the center of the room, whereupon clouds of odoriferous incense filled the apartment. Suddenly, with the solemn sound of a far-off organ, phantoms of the great arose at the incantations of the magician. Shades of Voltaire, Rousseau, Marat, and Lavoisier appeared in rapid succession. Robertson, at the end of the entertainment, generally concluded by saying: “I have shown you, citizens, every species of phantom, and there is but one more truly terrible specter—the fate which is reserved for us all.” In a moment a grinning skeleton stood in the center of the hall waving a scythe. All these wonders were perpetrated through the medium of a phantasmagoric lantern, which threw images upon smoke. This was a great improvement on the simple concave mirror which so terrified Cellini. The effect of this entertainment was electrical; all Paris went wild over it. Robertson, lucky fellow, managed to save his neck from “La Guillotine,” and returned to his native province with a snug fortune to die of old age in a comfortable feather bed.

Clever as was Robertson’s ghost illusion, performed by the aid of the phantasmagoric lantern, it had one great defect: the images were painted on glass and lacked the necessary vitality. It was reserved for the nineteenth[8] century to produce the greatest of spectral exhibitions, that of Prof. Pepper, manager of the London Polytechnic Institution. In the year 1863, he invented a clever device for projecting the images of living persons in the air. The illusion is based on a simple optical effect. In the evening carry a lighted candle to the window and you will see reflected in the pane, not only the image of the candle but that of your hand and face as well. The same illusion may be seen while traveling in a lighted railway carriage at night; you gaze through the clear sheet of glass of the coach window and behold your “double” traveling along with you. The apparatus for producing the Pepper ghost has been used in dramatizations of Bulwer’s “Strange Story,” Dickens’ “Haunted Man” and “Christmas Carol,” and Dumas’ “Corsican Brothers.” In France the conjurers Robin and Lassaigne presented the illusion with many novel and startling effects.

One of the most famous of the eighteenth-century magicians was Torrini, a French nobleman, whose real name was the Comte de Grisi. His father, a devoted adherent of Louis XVI., lost his life at the storming of the Tuileries, on that fatal day in August, ever memorable in the annals of French history. Profiting by the disorders in the French capital, the young De Grisi was enabled to pass the barriers and reach the family chateau in Languedoc. He dug up a secret treasure his father had concealed for any emergency, and proceeded to Italy to study medicine. He established himself at Naples, where he soon became a physician of note. Here his noble birth and aristocratic manners gave him the entrée into the best society of the city. Like many enthusiastic amateurs he became interested in legerdemain, and performed for the amusement of his friends. A peculiar incident led him to adopt the profession of a magician. At the Carnival of 1796, the Chevalier Pinetti arrived in Naples to give a series of magical entertainments. Pinetti was the idol of the Italian public. The Comte de Grisi, having unraveled the secrets of most of Pinetti’s illusions, performed them for his friends. Pinetti, who was furious at having a rival, set about revenging himself on the audacious amateur. Without much difficulty he succeeded in ingratiating himself with De Grisi, and complimented him on his success as a prestidigitateur. One evening, he persuaded the young Count to take his place at the theater and give a performance for the benefit of the poor of the city. Intoxicated with flattery, to say nothing of numerous glasses of champagne, De Grisi consented. The greater number of Pinetti’s tricks were performed by the aid of confederates in the audience, who loaned various objects of which the magician had duplicates. A diabolical trap was laid for De Grisi. One of the accomplices declared that he had loaned the young magician a valuable diamond ring to use in a trick, and had had returned to him a pinchbeck substitute. Here was a dilemma, but De Grisi put the man off with an excuse until after the entertainment. Approaching the box where the king and his family were seated, De Grisi begged the monarch to draw a card from a pack. No sooner, however, had[9] the king glanced at the card he had selected, than he threw it angrily on the stage, with marks of intense dissatisfaction. De Grisi, horror-struck, picked up the card and found written on it a coarse insult. The conjurer rushed off the stage, picked up his sword, and searched in vain for the author of the infamous act of treachery; but Pinetti had fled. De Grisi was so utterly ruined, socially and financially, by this fiasco, that he came near dying of brain fever, the result of overwrought emotions. On his recovery he vowed vengeance on Pinetti, a most unique vengeance. Says De Grisi: “To have challenged him would be doing him too much honor, so I vowed to fight him with his own weapons, and humiliate the shameful traitor in my turn. This was the plan I drew up: I determined to devote myself ardently to sleight-of-hand, to study thoroughly an art of which I as yet knew only the first principles. Then, when quite confident in myself—when I had added many new tricks to Pinetti’s repertoire—I would pursue my enemy, enter every town before him, and continually crush him by my superiority.”

De Grisi sold everything he possessed, took refuge in the country, and toiled for six months at sleight-of-hand. Then with splendid apparatus and elaborate printing, he took the field against his hated enemy. He succeeded in accomplishing his ends: Pinetti had to retire vanquished. Pinetti died in a state of abject misery at the village of Bastichoff, in Volhynia, Russia. De Grisi determined to proceed to Rome as a finish to his Italian performances. Pinetti had never dared to enter the Eternal City, since he laid claims to genuine necromancy to encompass his tricks. Remembering the fate of the Comte de Cagliostro, he apprehended a trial for sorcery, and a possible auto da fé.

De Grisi, however, had no such fears, as his entertainment was professedly a sleight-of-hand performance and did not come under the denomination of witchcraft and necromancy. The Frenchman set his wits to work to concoct a trick worthy to set before a Pope. Happening one day to drop into a jeweler’s shop, he espied a magnificent watch lying on the counter undergoing repairs. “Whose chronometer?” inquired the wizard nonchalantly. “His Eminence, the Cardinal de ——’s watch, worth ten thousand francs, and made by the renowned Brègnet of Paris,” said the jeweler. “Is there another timepiece similar to this in Rome?” continued De Grisi, examining the watch. “But one,” replied the jeweler, “and that owned by an improvident young noble who spends his time in the gambling hells wasting his ancestral estates.”

That was enough for the juggler. He commissioned the jeweler to purchase the watch at any cost and engrave the Cardinal’s coat-of-arms inside of the case. The expensive recreation cost De Grisi a thousand francs. When the evening of the performance arrived the magician appeared before the Pope and a brilliant assemblage of red-robed Cardinals and executed his astonishing experiments in conjuring. As a culminating feat he borrowed the Cardinal’s chronometer, which had been returned by the jeweler. After many promises to handle it carefully, he dropped it on the floor of the audience chamber as if[10] by accident and set his heel upon it. Smash went the priceless timepiece. The Cardinal turned pale with rage, and all were horror-struck at the unfortunate fiasco. But the Frenchman smiled at the consternation of the spectators, picked up the fragments of the watch, had them fully identified in order to preclude any idea of substitution, and then proceeded to pulverize them in a big brass mortar. A detonation took place and red flames leaped up from the mortar in the most approved order of diabolism; all crowded around to watch the result. Watching his opportunity, the wizard surreptitiously slipped the duplicate chronometer into a pocket of the Pope’s cassock. The mystification was complete when De Grisi pretended to pass the ingot of melted gold from the mortar into the pocket of His Holiness, resulting in the discovery of the watch, which was produced intact. This seeming marvel made the lifelong reputation of the French artist. The Pontiff presented him the day after the séance with a magnificent diamond-studded snuff-box as a mark of esteem.

Years after this event, De Grisi’s son was accidentally shot by a spectator in the gun trick. A real leaden bullet got among the sham bullets and was loaded into the weapon. The wretched father did not long survive this tragic affair. He died in the city of Lyons, France, in the early part of this century. De Grisi was a superb performer with cards, his “blind man’s game of piquet” being a trick unparalleled in the annals of conjuring.

After De Grisi came a host of clever magicians, among whom may be mentioned Döbler, whose principal trick was the lighting of one hundred candles by a pistol shot; Philippe, the first European performer to present the “bowls of gold fish” and the “Chinese rings”; Bosco, expert in cup and ball conjuring; and Comte, ventriloquist and expert in flower tricks. Comte was the most distinguished of these artists, being noted for his wit and audacity. He was a past master in the art of flattery. The following good story is told of him: During a performance at the Tuileries given before Louis XVIII, Comte asked the king to draw a card from a pack. The monarch selected the king of hearts, by chance, or by adroit forcing on the part of the magician. The card was torn up, and rammed into a pistol.

“Look, your majesty,” said Comte, pointing to a vase of flowers which stood upon a table in the center of the stage. “I shall fire this pistol at the vase and the king of hearts will appear just above the flowers.”

The weapon was fired, whereupon a small bust of Louis XVIII appeared instantaneously out of the center of the bouquet.

“Ah,” exclaimed the king to the conjurer, in a slightly sarcastic tone of voice, “I think. Monsieur Magician, that you have made a slight mistake. You promised to make the king of hearts appear, but——”

“Pardon me, your majesty,” interrupted the conjurer, “but I have fulfilled my promise to the letter. Behold, there is your likeness!—and are you not the acknowledged king of all our hearts, the well-beloved of the French people?”

[11]

The king bowed his royal head benignly, while the assembled courtiers made the salon ring with their applause. The journals next morning reported this little scene, and Comte became the lion of the hour.

Comte was in the zenith of his fame when a new performer entered the arena of magic—Robert-Houdin. One day the following modest handbill appeared on the Parisian bulletin-boards:

Aujourd’hui Jeudi, 3 Juillet 1845.
PREMIÈRE REPRÉSENTATION
DES
SOIRÉES FANTASTIQUES
DE
ROBERT-HOUDIN.
AUTOMATES, PRESTIDIGITATION, MAGIE

In the year 1843 there was situated in the Rue du Temple, Paris, a little shop, over the door of which was displayed the unpretentious sign, “M. Robert-Houdin, Pendules de Précision.” It was the shop of a watchmaker and constructor of mechanical toys. The proprietor was destined to be the greatest and most original fantaisiste of his time, perhaps of all times, the founder of a new and unique school of conjuring, and the inventor of some marvelous illusions. No one who stopped at the unpretentious place could have prophesied that the keen-eyed little Frenchman, in his long blouse besmeared with oil and iron filings, would become the premier prestidigitateur of France, the inventor of the electrical bell, improver of the electrical clock, author, and ambassador to the Arabs of Algeria. During his spare moments Houdin constructed the ingenious automata that subsequently figured in his famous Soirées Fantastiques. When he went abroad on business or for pleasure he wore the large paletot of the period and practiced juggling with cards and coins in the capacious pockets.

About the time of which I write he invented his “mysterious clock”—a piece of apparatus that kept admirable time, though apparently without works—and he sold one of them to a wealthy nobleman, the Count de l’Escalopier. The Count, who was an ardent lover of the art amusante, or science wedded[12] to recreation, made frequent visits to the shop in the Rue du Temple, and sat for hours on a stool in the dingy workroom watching Houdin at work. A strong friendship grew up between the watchmaker and the scion of the Old Régime. It was not long before Houdin confided the secret of his hopes to the Count—his burning desire to become a great magician.

The nobleman approved the idea, and in order to give the conjurer opportunities for practice, so that he might acquire the confidence which he lacked, constantly invited him to pass the evening at the De l’Escalopier mansion, for the purpose of trying his skill in sleight-of-hand before a congenial and art-loving company. On one occasion, after a dinner given in honor of Monseigneur Affré, Archbishop of Paris, who was killed at the barricades during the Revolution of 1848, Houdin performed his clever trick of the “burnt writing restored.” In the language of Houdin, the effect was as follows: “After having requested the spectators carefully to examine a large envelope sealed on all sides, I handed it to the Archbishop’s Grand Vicar, begging him to keep it in his own possession. Next, handing to the prelate himself a small slip of paper, I requested him to write thereon, secretly, a sentence, or whatever he might choose to think of; the paper was then folded in four, and (apparently) burnt. But scarcely was it consumed and the ashes scattered to the winds, than, handing the envelope to the Archbishop, I requested him to open it. The first envelope being removed a second was found, sealed in like manner; then another, until a dozen envelopes, one inside another, had been opened, the last containing the scrap of paper restored intact. It was passed from hand to hand, and each read as follows:

“‘Though I do not claim to be a prophet I venture to predict, sir, that you will achieve brilliant success in your future career.’”

Houdin preserved this slip of paper as a religious relic for many years, but lost it during his travels in Algeria.

The Count de l’Escalopier, after the incident at the memorable dinner, urged Houdin to start out immediately as a conjurer. One day the watchmaker, after considerable hesitation, confessed his inability to do so on account of poverty.

“Ah,” replied the nobleman, “if that’s all, it is easily remedied. I have at home ten thousand francs or so which I really don’t know what to do with. Accept them, my dear Houdin, and begin your career.”

But Houdin, loath to incur the responsibility of risking a friend’s money in a theatrical speculation, without some guarantee of its being repaid, refused the generous offer. Again and again De l’Escalopier urged him to take it, but without success; finally the nobleman, annoyed at the mechanician’s obstinacy, left the shop in a state of pique. But after a few days he returned, saying, as he entered: “Since you are determined not to accept a favor from me, I have come to ask one of you. Listen! For the last year an escritoire in my sleeping-apartment has been robbed from time to time of large sums of money, notwithstanding[13] the fact that I have adopted all manner of precautions and safeguards, such as changing the locks, having secret fastenings placed on the doors, etc. I have dismissed my servants, one after another, but, alas! have not discovered the culprit. This very morning I have been robbed of a couple of thousand-franc notes. There is a dark cloud of suspicion and evil hanging over my house that nothing will lift till the thief is caught. Can you help me?”

“I am willing to serve you,” said Houdin; “but how?”

“What!” replied De l’Escalopier; “you a mechanician, and ask how? Come, come, my friend; can you not devise some mechanical means for apprehending a thief?”

Houdin thought a minute, and said quietly: “I’ll see what I can do for you.” Setting to work feverishly, he invented the apparatus, and aided by his two workmen, who remained with him the whole of the night, he had it ready at eight o’clock the next morning. To the nobleman’s house Houdin went. The Count under various pretexts had sent all his servants away, so that no one should be aware of the mechanician’s visit.

While Houdin was placing his apparatus in position, the Count frequently expressed his wonderment at the heavy padded glove which the conjurer wore on his right hand.

“All in good time, my dear Count,” said Houdin. When everything was arranged, the mechanician began his explanation of the working of the secret detective apparatus. “You see, it is like this,” he remarked. “The thief unlocks the desk, but no sooner does he raise the lid, ever so little, than this claw-like piece of mechanism, attached to a light rod, and impelled by a spring, comes sharply down on the back of the hand which holds the key, and at the same time the report of a pistol is heard. The noise is to alarm the household, and——”

“But the glove you wear!” interrupted the nobleman.

“The glove is to protect me from the operation of the steel claw which tattooes the word Robber on the back of the criminal’s hand.”

“How is that accomplished?” said De l’Escalopier.

“Simplest thing in the world,” replied Houdin. “The claw consists of a number of very short but sharp points, so fixed as to form the word: and these points are shoved through a pad soaked with nitrate of silver, a portion of which is forced by the blow into the punctures, thereby making the scars indelible for life. A fleur de lys stamped by an executioner with a red-hot iron could not be more effective.”

“But, M. Houdin,” said the Count, horror-stricken at the idea. “I have no right to anticipate Justice in this way. To brand a fellow-being in such a fashion would forever close the doors of society against him. I could not think of such a thing. Besides, suppose some member of my family through carelessness or forgetfulness were to fall a victim to this dreadful apparatus.”

[14]

“You are right,” answered Houdin. “I will alter the mechanism in such a way that no harm can come to any one, save a mere superficial flesh wound that will easily heal. Give me a few hours.”

The Count assented, and the mechanician went home to his work-shop to make the required alterations. At the appointed time, he returned to the nobleman’s mansion, and the machine was adjusted to the desk. In place of the branding apparatus, Houdin had arranged a kind of cat’s claw to scratch the back of the thief’s hand. The desk was closed, and the two men parted company.

The Count did everything possible to excite the cupidity of the robber. He sent repeatedly for his stock-broker, on which occasions sums of money were ostentatiously passed from hand to hand; he even made a pretense of going away from home for a short time, but the bait proved a failure. Each day the nobleman reported, “no result,” to Houdin, and was on the point of giving up in despair. Two weeks elapsed. One morning De l’Escalopier rushed into the watchmaker’s shop, sank breathlessly on a chair, and ejaculated: “I have caught the robber at last.”

“Indeed,” replied Houdin; “who is he?”

“But first let me relate what happened,” said the Count. “I was seated this morning in my library when the report of a pistol resounded in my sleeping-apartment. ‘The thief!’ I exclaimed excitedly. I looked around me for a weapon, but finding nothing at hand, I grasped an ancient battle-ax from a stand of armor near by, and ran to seize the robber. I pushed open the door of the sleeping-room and saw, to my intense surprise, Bernard, my trusted valet and factotum, a man who has been in my employ for upwards of twenty years. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked; ‘what was that noise?’

“In the coolest manner he replied: ‘I came into the room just as you did, sir, at the explosion of the pistol. I saw a man making his escape down the back stairs, but I was so bewildered that I was unable to apprehend him.’

“I rushed down the back stairs, but, finding the door locked on the inside, knew that no one could have passed that way. A great light broke upon me. ‘Great God!’ I cried, ‘can Bernard be the thief?’ I returned to the library. My valet was holding his right hand behind him, but I dragged it forward, and saw the imprint of the claw thereon. The wound was bleeding profusely. Finding himself convicted, the wretch fell on his knees and begged my forgiveness.

“‘How long have you been robbing me?’ I asked.

“‘For nearly two years,’ he said.

“‘And how much have you taken?’ I inquired.

“‘Fifteen thousand francs, which I invested in Government stock. The scrip is in my desk.’

“I found the securities correct, and in the presence of another witness, made Bernard sign the following confession:

[15]

“‘I, the undersigned, hereby admit having stolen from the Count de l’Escalopier the sum of 15,000 francs, taken by me from his desk by the aid of false keys.

“‘Bernard X——.

“‘Paris, the — day of ——, 18—.

“‘Now go,’ I exclaimed, ‘and never enter this house again. You are safe from prosecution; go, and repent of your crime.’

“And now,” said the Count to Houdin, “I want you to take these 15,000 francs and begin your career as a conjurer; surely you cannot refuse to accept as a loan the money your ingenuity has rescued from a robber. Take it——”

The nobleman produced the securities, and pressed them into Houdin’s hands. The mechanician, overcome by the Count’s generosity, embraced him in true Gallic style, and this embrace, Houdin says, “was the only security De l’Escalopier would accept from me.”

Without further delay the conjurer had a little theatre constructed in the Palais Royal, and began his famous performances, called by him: “Soirées Fantastiques de Robert-Houdin,” which attained the greatest popularity. He was thus enabled within a year to pay back the money borrowed from the Count de l’Escalopier.

Jean Eugène Robert, afterwards known to fame by the cognomen of Robert-Houdin, was born at Blois, the birthplace of Louis XII, on the sixth of December, 1805. His father was a watchmaker. At the age of eleven Robert was sent to a Jesuit college at Orleans, preparatory to the study of law, and was subsequently apprenticed to a notary at Blois, but finding the transcribing of musty deeds a tiresome task, he prevailed on his father to let him follow the trade of a watchmaker. While working in this capacity, he chanced one day to enter a bookseller’s shop to purchase a treatise on mechanics, and was handed by mistake a work on conjuring. The marvels contained in this volume fired his imagination, and this incident decided his future career, but he did not realize his ambition until later in life, when De l’Escalopier came to his aid.

In his early study of sleight-of-hand Houdin soon recognized that the organs performing the principal part are the sight and touch. He says in his memoirs: “I had often been struck by the ease with which pianists can read and perform at sight the most difficult pieces. I saw that, by practice, it would be possible to create a certainty of perception and facility of touch, rendering it easy for the artist to attend to several things simultaneously, while his hands were busy employed with some complicated task. This faculty I wished to acquire and apply to sleight-of-hand; still, as music could not afford me the necessary element, I had recourse to the juggler’s art.” Residing at Blois at the time was a mountebank who, for a consideration, initiated the young Houdin into the mysteries of juggling, enabling him to juggle four[16] balls at once and read a book at the same time. “The practice of this feat,” continues Houdin, “gave my fingers a remarkable degree of delicacy and certainty, while my eye was at the same time acquiring a promptitude of perception that was quite marvelous.”

On Thursday evening, July 3, 1845, Houdin’s first Fantastic Evening took place in a small hall of the Palais Royal. The little auditorium would seat only two hundred people, but the prices of admission were somewhat high, front seats being rated at $1 or five francs, and no places were to be had under forty sous. The stage set represented a miniature drawing-room in white and gold in the Louis XV style. In the center was an undraped table, flanked by two small side tables of the lightest possible description; at the side wings or walls were consoles, with about five inches of gilt fringe hanging from them; and across the back of the room ran a broad shelf, upon which were displayed the various articles to be used in the séances. A chandelier and elegant candelabra made the little scene brilliant. The simplicity of everything on the conjurer’s stage disarmed suspicion; apparently there was no place for the concealment of anything. Prior to Houdin’s day the wizards draped all of their tables to the floor, thereby making them little else than ponderous confederate boxes. Conjuring under such circumstances was child’s play, as compared with the difficulties to be encountered with the apparatus of the new school. In addition, Houdin discarded the long, flowing robes of many of his predecessors, as savoring too much of charlatanism, and appeared in evening dress. Since his time, no first-class prestidigitateur has dared to offend good taste, by presenting his illusions in any other costume than that of a gentleman habited à la mode, nor has he dared to give a performance with draped tables. In fact, modern professors of the art magique have gone to extremes on the question of tables and elaborate apparatus, many of them using simple little guéridons with glass tops, unfringed. Houdin’s center table was a marvel of mechanical skill and ingenuity. Concealed in the body were “vertical rods each arranged to rise and fall in a tube, according as it was drawn down by a spiral spring or pulled up by a whip-cord which passed over a pulley at the top of the tube and so down the table leg to the hiding place of the confederate.” There were “ten of these pistons, and the ten cords, passing under the floor of the stage, terminated at a keyboard. Various ingenious automata were actuated by this means of transmitting motion.” The consoles were nothing more than shallow wooden boxes with openings through the side scenes. The tops of the consoles were perforated with traps. Any object which the wizard desired to work off secretly to his confederate behind the scenes was placed on one of these traps and covered with a paper, metal cover, or a handkerchief. Touching a spring caused the article to fall noiselessly through the trap upon cotton batting, and roll into the hands of the conjurer’s alter ego, or concealed assistant.

Let us now look at some of the illusions of the classic prestidigitateur of[17] France. By far his best and greatest invention is the “light and heavy chest,” of which he himself wrote: “I do not think, modesty apart, that I ever invented anything so daringly ingenious.” The conjurer came forward with a little wooden box, to the top of which was attached a metal handle, and remarked as follows to the audience: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have here a cash box which possesses some peculiar qualities. I place in it, for example, a lot of bank-notes, for safe-keeping, and by mesmeric power I can make the box so heavy that the strongest man cannot lift it. Let us try the experiment.” He placed the box on the run-down, which served as a means of communication between the stage and the audience, and requested the services of a volunteer assistant.

When the latter had satisfied the audience that the box was almost as light as a feather, the conjurer executed his pretended mesmeric passes, and bade the gentleman lift it a second time. But try as he might, with all his strength, the volunteer would prove unequal to the task. Reverse passes over the demon box restored it to its pristine lightness. This extraordinary trick is performed as follows: Underneath the cloth cover of the run-down, at a spot marked, was a powerful electro-magnet with conducting wires reaching behind the scenes to a battery. At a signal from the magician a secret operator turned on the electric current, and the box, which had an iron bottom, clung to the electro-magnet with supernatural attraction. It is needless to remark that the bottom of the cash box was painted to represent mahogany, so as to correspond with the top and sides.

The phenomena of electro-magnetism were entirely unknown to the general public in 1845, when this trick of the spirit cash-box was first presented. As may be well imagined, it created a profound sensation. When people became more enlightened on the subject of electricity, Houdin added an additional effect, in order to throw the public off the scent as to the principle on which the experiment was based. After first having exhibited the trick on the “run-down,” he hooked the box to one end of a rope which passed over a pulley attached to the ceiling of the hall. Several gentlemen were now invited to hold the disengaged end of the rope. They were able to raise and lower the box with perfect ease, but at a wave of the magician’s wand the little chest descended slowly to the floor, lifting off their feet the spectators who were holding the rope, to the astonishment of everyone. The secret lay in the pulley and block. The rope, instead of passing straight over the pulley, in on one side and out on the other, went through the block and through the ceiling, working over a double pulley on the floor above, where a workman at a windlass held his own against the united power of the five or six gentlemen below. It is a simple mechanical principle and will be easily understood by those acquainted with mechanical power.

Houdin’s orange tree, that blossomed and bore fruit in sight of the audience, was a clever piece of mechanism. The blossoms, constructed of tissue[18] paper, were pushed up through the hollow branches of the tree by the pistons rising in the table and operating against similar pistons in the orange-tree box. When these pedals were relaxed the blossoms disappeared and the fruit was gradually developed—real fruit, too, which was distributed among the spectators. The oranges were stuck on iron spikes affixed to the branches of the tree and hid from view by hemispherical wire screens painted green and secreted by the leaves. When these screens were swung back by pedal play the fruit was revealed. In performing this illusion Houdin first borrowed a handkerchief from a lady in the audience, and caused it to pass from his hand into an orange left on the tree. When the disappearance was effected, the fruit opened, revealing the handkerchief in its center. Two mechanical butterflies, exquisitely made, then took the delicate piece of cambric or lace and flew upwards with it. The handkerchief of course was exchanged in the beginning of the trick for a dummy belonging to the magician. It was worked into the mechanical orange by an assistant, before the tree was brought forward for exhibition.

Houdin was very fond of producing magically bon-bons, small fans, toys, bouquets, and bric-à-brac from borrowed hats. These articles he distributed with liberal hand among the spectators, exclaiming: “Here are toys for young children and old.” There was always a great scramble for these souvenirs. The conjurer found time to edit and publish a small comic newspaper, “Cagliostro,” copies of which were handed to every one in the theatre. The contents of this journal pour rire were changed from evening to evening, which entailed no small labor on the part of the hard-worked prestidigitateur. It was illustrated with comic cartoons, and was eagerly perused between the acts.

Here is one of Houdin’s bon mots: Le Ministre de l’Intérieur ne recevra pas demain, mais le Ministre des Finances recevra tous les jours ... et jours suivants.

The crowning event of Houdin’s life was his embassy to Algeria to counteract the influence of the Marabout priests over the ignorant Arabs. The Marabouts are Mohammedan miracle workers, and are continually fanning the flames of rebellion and discontent against French domination. The French Government invited Robert-Houdin to go to Algeria and perform before the Arabs in order to show them that a French wizard was greater than a Marabout fakir. It was pitting Greek against Greek! The marvels of optics, chemistry, electricity, and mechanics which Houdin had in his repertoire, coupled with his digital dexterity, were well calculated to evoke astonishment and awe. How well the famous French wizard succeeded in his mission is a matter of history. A full account of his adventures among the Arabs is contained in his memoirs and makes very entertaining reading. After his successful embassy to the land of the white bournous and turban, Houdin returned to France and settled down at St. Gervais near Blois, giving his time to electrical studies and inventions.

[19]

He received several gold medals from the French Government for the successful application of electricity to the running of clocks. The conjurer’s house was a regular Magic Villa, being full of surprises for the friends who visited the place. There were sliding panels in the walls, trap doors, automatons in every niche, descending floors, and electric wires from attic to cellar. Houdin died at St. Gervais in June, 1871. His son-in-law, M. Hamilton, continued to carry on the Temple of Enchantment at Paris, and at the present time there is a little theater on the Boulevard des Italiens called “Théâtre Robert-Houdin,” where strolling conjurers hold forth. It was a great disappointment to Houdin when his two sons refused to take up magic as a profession; one entered the French army, and the other became a watchmaker.

One of the best sleight-of-hand artists that ever lived was Carl Herrmann, who styled himself the “Premier Prestidigitateur of France and First Professor of Magic in the World.” He died at Carlsbad, June 8, 1887, at the advanced age of seventy-two. Of him Burlingame says: “Without using much mechanical or optical apparatus, he produced many wonderful effects by a sharp observation of the absence of mind of the human auditor, assisted by a hand as firm as steel and capable of the most deft movement.” Carl Herrmann traveled extensively, and many conjurers adopted his name as a nom de théâtre. Magicians seem to have a penchant for this sort of thing, as witness the case of Signor Blitz. Antonio Blitz, a very clever performer, no sooner arrived in the United States than imitators sprang up like mushrooms in a single night. In his “Fifty Years in the Magic Circle,” he gives a list of eleven of these impostors, who not only had the impudence to assume his name, but circulated verbatim copies of his handbills and advertisements—

A clever entertainer was Robert Heller. He was a magician, a mimic, and a musician—a combination of talents rarely seen in one individual. He was, indeed, the Admirable Crichton of fantaisistes. As a pure sleight-of-hand[20] artist, Heller was not the equal of some of his contemporaries, but he made up for all deficiencies in this respect by his histrionic abilities. By the power of his address and wit he invested the most insignificant feats of legerdemain with a peculiar charm. In this regard he was like Robert-Houdin. Robert Heller, or Palmer, was born in London, in the year 1833. Early in life he manifested a unique talent for music, and won a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music at the age of fourteen. Having witnessed several performances of the conjurer Houdin, in London, he became enamored of magic, and devoted his time to perfecting himself in the art of legerdemain, subsequently traveling around giving entertainments in the English provinces. In the year 1852 he made his bow to a New York audience at the Chinese Assembly Rooms, on which occasion he wore a black wig and spoke with a decided Gallic accent, having come to the conclusion that a French prestidigitateur would be better received in the United States than an English wizard. I have this on the authority of Henry Hatton, the conjurer, who wrote an article on Heller’s “second-sight” trick for the “Century Magazine” some years ago. Hatton also says that Heller began his magical soirée with an address in the French language. Not meeting with the desired financial success, Heller abandoned conjuring, and settled in Washington, D. C., as a teacher of the piano and organist of one of the large churches of the city. Eventually he married one of his music pupils, a Miss Kieckhoffer, the daughter of a wealthy German banker, and abandoned music for magic. He went to New York, where he opened Heller’s Hall, in a building which then stood opposite Niblo’s Garden, on Broadway. His second début as a conjurer was an artistic and financial success. After a splendid run in New York he returned to London, opening what is now Pool’s Theater. Subsequently he visited Australia, India, and California, returning to New York in 1875. He died November 28, 1878, at the Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, at the height of his fame. Like most of his confrères, Heller was a clever advertiser. His theatrical posters usually bore the following amusing verse:

His entertainments consisted of magic, music, and an exhibition of pretended clairvoyance. Those who were not interested in his feats of legerdemain flocked to hear his superb performances on the piano.

Heller, like Houdin, made great use of electricity in his magical séances. Many of his electrical tricks were of his own invention. In his will he directed his executors to destroy all of his apparatus, so that it might not come into the possession of any other conjurer.

[21]

The most popular performer in this country was Alexander Herrmann, a European by birth, but an American by adoption. I am indebted to Mr. Wm. Robinson, for years an assistant to Herrmann, for the following account of the great conjurer’s career:

“The late Alexander Herrmann was born in Paris, France, February 11, 1843, and died in his private car on December 17, 1896, while en route from Rochester, N. Y., to Bradford, Pa. He came of a family of eminent prestidigitateurs, his father, Samuel Herrmann, being the most famous conjurer of his day. Samuel Herrmann was a great favorite with the Sultan of Turkey, who frequently sent for him to give entertainments in the royal palace at Constantinople.

“The next in the family to wield the magic wand was Carl Herrmann, who was the first of the Herrmanns to visit America, and the first to use and introduce the name ‘prestidigitateur’ in this country. Carl, Alexander’s eldest brother, achieved great success in the world of magic. He died June 8, 1887, at Carlsbad, Germany, possessed of a large fortune. There were sixteen children in the Herrmann family, Carl being the eldest, and Alexander the youngest. After Carl adopted magic as a profession, the father abandoned it, and began the study of medicine. It was the father’s fondest hope that Alexander, his favorite son, should be a physician, but fate decreed otherwise. Alexander’s whole desire and ambition was to become a magician like his father and his brother. He persuaded his brother to take him as an assistant. One day young Alexander was missing from the[22] parental roof; he had been kidnapped and taken away by Carl, with whom he made his first public appearance, at the age of eight, at a performance in St. Petersburg, Russia. Even at that early age his great dexterity, ingenuity, and presence of mind were simply marvelous. The sudden appearance of the father dispelled the visions of the embryonic magician, and he was compelled to return home. But the youth’s attention could not be diverted from his purpose, and again he became his brother’s assistant. This time, the father compromised by consenting to Alexander’s remaining on the stage, provided his education were not neglected. Carl engaged two competent tutors to travel with the company and instruct the young prodigy. For six years the brothers worked together, visiting Spain, France, Germany, Russia, and the surrounding countries. Again the parents claimed Alexander, and placed him in the University of Vienna. At the age of sixteen, the old desire and fascination took possession of him. He accepted his brother’s proposal to make a tour of the world, and ran away from home and studies. Their first appearance in America was at the Academy of Music, New York, Monday, September 16, 1861. Their last joint engagement was in this country in the year 1869. On the opening night, in New York, Monday, September 20, Carl introduced Alexander to the audience as his brother and successor. When this engagement terminated, the brothers separated; Carl made a short tour of this country, but Alexander went to Europe, where he appeared in the principal cities, subsequently visiting the Brazils and South America. After that he made a remarkable run of one thousand performances at the Egyptian Hall, London, England. From England he returned to the United States in the year 1874, and from that period made this country his home, becoming a naturalized citizen in Boston, 1876. His career as a magician was one uninterrupted success. The many lengthy and favorable notices of him in the leading journals of this country, immediately after his death, showed that he was regarded as a public character.

“Herrmann bore a remarkable resemblance to ‘His Satanic Majesty,’ which he enhanced in all possible ways, in recognition of human nature’s belief in the superhuman powers of the arch enemy. Despite this mephistophelian aspect, his face was not forbidding; his manner was ever genial and kind. ‘Magicians are born, not made’ was a favorite paraphrase of his, and Dame Nature certainly had him in view for one when she brought him to this sphere.

“His success lay in his skill as a manipulator, in his witty remarks and ever-running fire of good-natured small talk. He was a good conjurer, a clever comedian, and a fine actor. His ‘misdirection,’ to use a technical expression, was beyond expression. If his luminous eyes turned in a certain direction, all eyes were compelled (as by some mysterious power) to follow, giving his marvelously dexterous hands the better chance to perform those tricks that were the admiration and wonder of the world.

[23]

“Alexander Herrmann’s pet hobby was hypnotism, of which weird science he was master, and to its use he attributed many of his successful feats. His great forte was cards; he was an adept in the ordinary tricks of causing cards to disappear, and reappear from under some stranger’s vest or from a pocket. With the greatest ease and grace, he distributed cards about a theater, sending them into the very laps and hands of individuals asking for them. On one occasion he gave a performance before Nicholas, the Czar of all the Russians. The Czar complimented the conjurer upon his skill, and decorated him, at the same time smilingly remarking: ‘I will show you a trick.’ The Czar tore a pack of cards into halves, and good-humoredly asked: ‘What do you think of that? Can you duplicate it?’ His surprise was great to see Herrmann take one of the halves of the pack and tear it into halves. Herrmann was as clever with his tongue as with his hands, having mastered French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Dutch, and English. He also had a fair knowledge of Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, and Swedish.

“He was decorated by almost every sovereign of Europe, and many of them gave him jewels. The King of Belgium and the late King of Spain each presented him with a cross; there was a ring from the King of Portugal, one from the Prince of Wales, and various other gems.

“At private entertainments and clubs Herrmann was especially felicitous as a prestidigitateur. I will enumerate a few of his numberless sleight-of-hand tricks: He would place a wine glass, full to the brim with sparkling wine, to his lips, when suddenly, to his apparent surprise and consternation, the glass of wine would disappear from his hand and be reproduced immediately from some bystander’s coat-tail pocket. He would place a ring upon the finger of some person, and immediately the ring would vanish from sight. A silver dollar would change into a twenty-dollar gold piece. A magnum bottle of champagne, holding about two quarts, would disappear, to reappear from under a gentleman’s coat. He was a capital ventriloquist, an imitator of birds, and quite clever at juggling and shadowgraphy, but he did not exhibit these talents in public.

“The lines in Herrmann’s hands were studies for adepts in chirography. There were three lines of imagination, instead of one, which indicates an imaginative faculty little less than miraculous, and denotes a generous heart, genius for friendship, a determined nature, and an artistic temperament. The accompanying impression of his right hand, taken a few days after he died, represents a short hand, owing to the fact that in death the fingers had curled inward somewhat. In life his hands were long, slender, and tapering.”

Leon Herrmann, a nephew of the great Herrmann, is now performing in the United States with success. In personal appearance he resembles his uncle. He is very clever at palmistry—the cardinal principle of conjuring.

[24]

One of the most original and inventive minds in the domain of conjuring is M. Bautier de Kolta, a Hungarian, who resides in Paris. He is almost a gentleman of leisure, and only appears about three nights in a week. He is the inventor of the flying bird cage, the cocoon, the vanishing lady, and the trick known as the “black art,” reproduced by Herrmann and Kellar.

In England, the leading exponent of the magic art is J. N. Maskelyne, who has held forth at Egyptian Hall, London, for many years. He has done more to unmask bogus spirit mediums than any conjurer living. Apprenticed like Houdin to a watchmaker, Maskelyne became acquainted with mechanics at an early age. He is the inventor of some very remarkable automata and illusions, for example “Psycho” and the “Miracle of Lh’asa.” At the juggling feat of spinning dessert plates he has but few rivals. To perform this requires the greatest skill and delicacy.

One of the best performers in the United States of anti-spiritualistic tricks and mind-reading experiments is Mr. Harry Kellar, a Pennsylvanian, who at one time in his career acted as assistant to the famous Davenport Brothers, spirit mediums. Kellar is exceedingly clever with handkerchief tricks, and his “rose-tree” feat has never been surpassed for dexterous and graceful manipulation. Like Houdin, De Kolta, and Maskelyne, he is an inventor, always having some new optical or mechanical illusion to grace his entertainments.

[25]

Of late years he has made the fatal mistake of exposing the methods of palmistry to the audience, thereby offending one of the cardinal principles of the art of legerdemain—never explain tricks, however simple, to the spectators. People go to magical entertainments to be mystified by the pretended sorcery of the magician, and when they learn by what absurdly simple devices a person may be fooled, they look with indifference at the more ambitious illusions of the performer. Palmistry is the very foundation stone of prestidigitation. No magician, unless he confines himself to mechanical tricks, can do without it in a performance.

Last but not least in the list of modern fantaisistes is the French entertainer, M. Trewey, an exceedingly clever juggler, sleight-of-hand artist, and shadowgraphist.

In his advertisements, Robert-Houdin was extremely modest. His successors in the art magique, however, have not imitated him in this respect. We have Wizards of the North, South, and West, White and Black Mahatmas, Napoleons of Necromancy, Modern Merlins, etc. Anderson, the English conjurer, went to the extreme in self-laudation, but managed to draw crowds by his vainglorious puffery and fill his coffers with gold, though he was but an indifferent performer. The following is one of his effusions:

“Theatre Royal, Adelphi ——. The greatest wonder at present in London is the Wizard of the North. He has prepared a Banquet of Mephistophelian, Dextrological, and Necromantic Cabals, for the Wonder seekers of the approaching holidays. London is again set on fire by the supernatural fame of the eximious Wizard; he is again on his magic throne; he waves his mystic scepter, and thousands of beauty, fashion, and literature, rush as if charmed, or spell-commanded, to behold the mesteriachist of this age of science and wonder! Hundreds are nightly turned from the doors of the mystic palace, that cannot gain admission; this is proof, and more than proof, of the Wizard’s powers of charming. During the last six nights, 12,000 spectators have been witnesses of the Wizard’s mighty feats of the science of darkness, and all exclaim, ‘Can this be man of earth? is he mortal or super-human?’

“Whitsun-Monday, and every evening during the week, The Great Delusionist will perform his Thousand Feats of Photographic and Alladnic Enchantments, concluding every evening with the Gun Delusion!!”

The Theosophical craze of recent years has had its influence on prestidigitation. A modern conjurer who does not claim some knowledge of the occult, or, at least, who has not traveled in the Orient, cuts but little figure in public estimation. Every now and then some enterprising wizard rushes into print[26] and exploits his weird adventures in Egypt and India, the birthplaces of magic and mystery. Every intelligent reader reads between the lines, but the extravagant stories of Oriental witchery have their effect on certain impressionable minds. The magician Kellar is a reputed Oriental tourist. He has journeyed, according to his own account, in the wilds of India, witnessed fakir-miracles at the courts of Mohammedan Rajahs, hobnobbed with Mahatmas in Tibetan lamaseries, and studied the black, blue, and white art in all its ramifications. In one of his recent advertisements he says: “Success crowns the season of Kellar, the Great American Magician. His Oriental magic, the result of years of original research in India, enables him to present new illusions that are triumphs of art, and attract enormous houses—dazing, delighting, dumbfounding, and dazzling theater-goers.”

[27]

The fascination which the general public finds in clever tricks and illusions is little to be wondered at, but it is a mistake to suppose that all the outfit which the modern magician needs is a few paper roses, a pack of cards, some coins, and a wand. The fact of the matter is, that usually the most entertaining tricks are those which are produced at considerable expense in the way of apparatus and stage fittings. It is for this very reason that the secret of the illusion is always so closely guarded by the prestidigitateur. After a series of sleight-of-hand tricks the magician usually leads up to what might be called “set pieces” in contradistinction to the sleight-of-hand tricks. Chief among the more important illusions are the wonderful cabinets and other articles of furniture which enable the wizard to make away with his assistants. We will describe a number of these arrangements for “mysterious disappearances” before proceeding with the mirror and other optical tricks to which the fin de siècle magician is so largely indebted. All of these illusions, as they depend upon pre-arranged machinery, afford an introduction to the tricks which, though much simpler, require a certain amount of aptness in manipulation.

The first illusion presents the disappearance of a lady, apparently through a solid looking glass. The method used is remarkably ingenious.

A large pier glass in an ornamental frame is wheeled upon the stage. The glass reaches down within about two feet of the floor, so that every one can see under it. The only peculiarities which a skilled observer would be apt to notice are a wide panel extending across the top of the frame and a bar crossing the glass some four feet from the floor. The first is ostensibly for artistic effect—it really is essential to the illusion. The horizontal piece purports[28] to be used in connection with a pair of brackets to support a glass shelf on which the lady stands—it also is essential to the illusion.

Brackets are attached to the frame, one on each side, at the level of the transverse piece, and a couple of curtains are carried by curtain poles or rods extending outward from the sides of the frame. Across the ends of the brackets a rod or bar is placed and a plate of glass rests as a shelf with one end on the rod and the other on the horizontal piece, thus impressing upon the audience the utility of the crosspiece. Its real function is not revealed.

A lady steps upon the shelf, using a step-ladder to reach it. She at once turns to the glass and begins inspecting her reflection. The exhibitor turns her with her face to the audience and she again turns back. This gives some byplay, and it also leaves her with her back to the audience, which is desirable for the performance of the deception. A screen is now placed around her. The screen is so narrow that a considerable portion of the mirror shows on[29] each side of it. All is quiet for a moment, and then the screen is taken down and the lady has disappeared. The mystification is completed by the removal of the portable mirror, it being thus made evident that the performer is not hidden behind it.

Two of our cuts illustrate the performance as seen by the audience, the second explains the illusion. The mirror is really in two sections, the apparently innocent crossbar concealing the top of the lower one. The large upper section is placed just back of the lower piece, so that its lower end slides down behind it. This upper section moves up and down in the frame like a window sash, and to make this possible without the audience discerning it the wide panel across the top of the frame is provided. When the glass is pushed up, its upper portion goes back of the panel, so that its upper edge is concealed.

Out of the lower portion of the same mirror a piece is cut, leaving an opening[30] large enough to admit of the passage of the person of the lady. The second cut, with this description, explains everything. The mirror as brought out on the stage has its large upper section in its lowest position. The notched portion lies behind the lower section, so that the notch is completely hidden from the audience. When the glass shelf is put in place, the performer steps upon it and is screened from view. The counterpoised glass is raised like a window sash, exposing the notch. The screen is just wide enough to conceal the notch, the fact that a margin of the mirror shows on each side of the screen still further masking the deception. From the scene piece back of the mirror an inclined platform is projected to the opening in the mirror. Through the opening the lady creeps and by the assistant is drawn away behind the scene; then the platform is removed, the glass is pushed down again, and, the screen being removed, there is no lady to be seen. The fact that some of the mirror was visible during the entire operation greatly increases the mystery. The lady passes through the notch feet foremost, and her position, facing the mirror, makes this the easier.

[31]

In this illusion the curtain rises and shows upon the stage what is to be interpreted as a representation of Noah’s ark, a rectangular box with ends added to it, which, curving upward, give it a boat-like aspect. It stands upon two horses or trestles. The cut, Fig. 3, shows the ark in its entirety. The exhibitor opens it on all sides, swinging down the ends and the front and back lids, and raising the top as shown in Fig. 1. It will be noticed by the observant spectator that the back lid is first dropped and that the assistant helps throughout, the reason of which will be seen later. The skeleton or frame of the structure is now disclosed and it is seen to be completely empty. It is now closed, this time the back lid being swung into place last, and all is ready for the flood. This is represented by the water poured in ad libitum through a funnel inserted in an aperture in the upper corner. To the audience it seems as if the ark were being filled with water. In reality, the water simply runs through a pipe, carried through one of the legs of the trestle, and so down beneath the stage. The management of the flood is illustrated in our cut, Fig. 2.

After the flood the exit of the animals from the ark is next to be attended to. Opening windows in its front, a quantity of animals and birds are taken out as shown in Fig. 3. Ducks, chickens, pigeons, cats, dogs, and a pig are removed and run around on the stage or fly about, and it[32]
[33] is wondered how so small an inclosure could contain such a collection. It is also to be observed that none of the animals are wet—the water has not reached them. More, however, is to follow, for the exhibitor now lets down the front, and a beautiful Eastern woman, Fig. 4, reclines gracefully in the center of the ark, which has only room enough to accommodate her. Where the animals came from, and how they and the woman could be found in the ark, which, when opened before the audience, seemed completely empty, and how they escaped the water, are the mysteries to be solved.

Our cut, Fig. 5, completes the explanation. The ends which are swung up and down in the preliminary exhibition of the ark are the receptacles which accommodate the animals and birds. They are stowed away in these, are swung up and down with them, and are taken out through apertures in their fronts.

The woman, the other tenant, is fastened originally to the back lid. When the ark is opened for inspection, this lid is swung down, ostensibly to enable the audience to see through the ark—in reality to prevent them from seeing through the illusion. For, as stated, it is swung down before the front is[34] opened, and as it goes down the woman goes with it, and remains attached to it and out of sight of the audience, who only see the rear side of the door as it is lowered. Fig. 5 shows the rear view of the ark when open, with the woman in place on the rear lid, and also shows the animals in place in the side compartments.

The illusion is exceedingly effective, and is received with high appreciation by the audience. To those who understand it, the performance is of heightened interest.

The heroine in this play was presented on the stage in a palanquin carried by four slaves. At a given moment the curtains were drawn and then immediately opened, when it was seen that the actress had disappeared; and yet the palanquin was well isolated on the shoulders of the carriers, who resumed their journey and carried it off the stage.

This trick, which preceded by many years Buatier de Kolta’s experiment, in which also a woman was made to disappear, but by an entirely different process, as will be explained later on in this chapter, was performed as follows: The four uprights arranged at the four corners of the apparatus were hollow, and each contained at the top a pulley over which a cord passed. These cords were attached by one end to the double bottom of the palanquin, and by the other end to a counterpoise concealed in the canopy.

At the precise moment at which the curtains were drawn, the carriers disengaged[35] the counterpoises, which, sliding within the uprights, rapidly raised the double bottom, with the actress, up to the interior of the canopy. The person thus made to disappear was quite slender and took such a position as to occupy as little space as possible. By making the shadows of the mouldings of the canopy and columns more pronounced through painting, and by exaggerating them, the affair was given an appearance of lightness that perplexed the most distrustful spectator.

One of the most mysterious among Kellar’s repertory of successful illusions is the “Cassadaga Propaganda,” an explanation of which is herewith presented.

The effect as produced on the spectators will first be outlined. A sheet of plate glass about sixteen by sixty inches in size is placed upon the backs of two chairs, and on it is erected a small beautifully finished cabinet consisting of four pieces, of which the sides are hinged to the back, and which, with the front, are seen resting on a chair at the side of the stage. When erected, the cabinet is forty-two inches high, thirty-six inches wide, and fourteen inches deep.

Tambourines and bells are placed in the cabinet and the doors closed, when the instruments instantly began playing and are then thrown out at the top of the cabinet. The cabinet is now opened and found to be empty. A slate[36] placed in the cabinet has a message written thereon. In fact, all manifestations usually exhibited in the large cabinets are produced, and yet this cabinet is apparently not large enough to contain a person. We say apparently not large enough; for, in reality, the whole secret consists in a small person, or an intelligent child of ten or twelve years of age, being suspended by invisible wires behind the back of the cabinet, where there is a small shelf on which the concealed assistant is sitting Turkish fashion. This folded cabinet is hung on two fine wires which lead up to the “flies” and over rollers or pulleys to the counterweights. When proper wire is used on a brightly illuminated stage the wires are absolutely invisible.

After showing the chairs and placing the glass plate upon them, the performer picks up the folded part of the cabinet and places it on the glass, the counterweights overcoming the extra weight of the concealed assistant. He then opens out the sides, places the front containing the doors in position, fastening same by hooks to the sides.

The inside of the cabinet and panels of doors are lined with pleated gold silk. There is a concealed opening in the silk at the back of the cabinet, for the assistant to pass his arm through, in order to handle whatever is placed within it.

Everything being in readiness, the tambourine and bell are placed in the cabinet and the doors are closed. The assistant now passes his hand and arm[37]
[38] through the opening in the back and shakes the tambourine, rings the bell, and throws both out over the top of the cabinet. When the doors are opened the cabinet is shown to be empty. Clean slates placed in the cabinet are removed with messages written on them; in fact, the manifestations that can be produced in the cabinet are limited only by the intelligence of the concealed assistant.

One of the cuts shows the cabinet with open doors as seen by the audience. The second cut is an end view looking from the side of stage, showing the assistant on a shelf at the rear of the cabinet, and the wires leading up and over to the counterweights.

The clever illusionist Chev. E. Thorn made great use of a variation of the “Cassadaga Propaganda.” He used two cabinets, each large enough to receive a person in an upright position. They were constructed of slats and were provided with curtains. Screens of the same color as the rear of the stage served to close the space between the slats. The magician deceived the audience by walking behind the cabinet or cage as often as possible when the screens were open so that the audience could see him through the slats. The carpet on the stage, the back of the stage, and the screen were all of the same shade of green.

The performers, usually a caliph and an odalisk, appear and disappear at will, really taking up the place on the wooden stage at the back of the cabinet. Usually two cages were used, one being suspended, and by the use of confederates who were dressed alike some very clever illusions were produced.

When the curtain rises the caliph stands on a little platform on the cage at the left, hidden by the cage and the screens. Attention is then called to the cage at the right whose screen is open so that the performer can be seen when he passes behind it.

After the performer has demonstrated this he pulls down red silk curtains over the side walls and the doors; the rear wall, however, remains uncovered. Now a brilliantly dressed odalisk steps into the box at the left. The doors have scarcely closed behind her when they open again, the curtains fly up, and it is seen that the woman has disappeared, and in her place stands a white-bearded caliph, while she appears at the rear door of the parquette smiling behind her veil. She passes down through the audience to the stage again. In the meantime the caliph has left the stage.

What follows is even more surprising. The curtains of both cages are pulled down, the caliph goes into the cage at the left and the odalisk into that at the right. The cage containing the odalisk is raised on a hoisting rope so that it hangs in midair with the doors open. The doors are closed, a shot is fired; at the same instant the doors of both cages spring open and the curtains are raised; the odalisk has disappeared from the cage, which stands again on the floor of the stage, but, at the same instant, she steps, as smiling as ever, from the cage at the left, from which the caliph has vanished. The two cages stand[39] open and the audience can see right through them. The curtain falls and the spectators rub their eyes in bewilderment.

The pulling down of the curtains serves to conceal the entrance of the caliph in the box. When the odalisk is to vanish and the caliph to appear he slips in from the board on the outside, while the odalisk takes her place on the board behind the screen. The odalisk who appears at the door of the auditorium and walks down through the audience is an exact double of the real odalisk who is standing invisible behind the screen on the board of the cage at the left. Owing to the peculiar costume of the odalisk this disguise is rendered very easy. While the real odalisk is standing behind the screen on the board of the cage at the left, the caliph installs himself in the cage. The false odalisk is then raised in the air in the second cage, through which the audience has been able to see up to this time. A shot is now fired and just at that time the odalisk moves very quickly on a board behind the screen and the cage is let down and stands firmly on the floor, at the same moment the odalisk in the other cage changing places with the caliph. The swinging cage appears to be empty and apparently the odalisk has passed through the air to the other cage. The success of the trick depends upon making the spectators believe that everything is done in cages through which they can see.

Of the many new illusions recently presented in Europe, an ingenious one is that of the appearing lady, the invention of that clever Hungarian magician Buatier de Kolta.

On the stage is seen a plain round top four-leg table, which the magician has been using as a resting place for part of the apparatus used in his magic performance. Eventually, the performer removes all articles from the table and covers it with a cloth that does not reach the floor. Our first engraving represents the table in this condition. On command, the cloth gradually rises from the center of the table as though something were pushing it up. In a few moments it becomes very evident that some one, or something, is on the[40] table covered by the cloth. The magician now removes the cloth and a lady is seen standing on the table, as shown in our second illustration.

The secret of this, as in all good illusions, is very simple, as the third illustration will show. In the stage there is a trap door, over which is placed a fancy rug that has a piece removed from it exactly the same size as the trap, to which the piece is fastened. When the trap is closed the rug appears to be an ordinary one. The table is placed directly over the trap. Below the stage is a box, open at the top, with cloth sides and wood bottom. To this box are attached four very fine wires, that lead up through the stage by means of small holes where the trap and floor join, over small pulleys in the frame of the table and down through the table legs, which are hollow, through the stage to a windlass. In the table top is a trap that divides in the center and opens outward. The top of the table is inlaid in such a manner as to conceal the[41] edges of the trap. The lady takes her place in the box in a kneeling position, the assistant stands at the windlass, and all is ready. Fig. 1 of our third engraving shows the arrangement beneath the stage, and Fig. 2 the under side of the table top.

The magician takes a large table cover, and, standing at the rear of table, proceeds to cover it by throwing cloth over table, so that it reaches the floor in front of the table, then slowly draws it up over the table top. The moment that the cloth touches the floor in front of the table, the trap is opened and the box containing the lady is drawn up under the table by means of the windlass, and the trap closed. This is done very quickly, during the moment’s time in which the magician is straightening out the cloth to draw it back over the table. All that now remains to be done is for the lady to open the trap in table and slowly take her place on top of the table, and close the trap.

The top and bottom of the box by means of which the lady is placed under the table are connected by means of three strong elastic cords placed inside of the cloth covering. These elastics are for the purpose of keeping the bottom and top frame of box together, except when distended by the weight of the lady. Thanks to this arrangement of the box, it folds up as the lady leaves it for her position on the table top, and is concealed inside of the frame of table[42] after her weight is removed from it. A somewhat similar trick is called “The Disappearing Lady.” In this illusion the process is worked in the reverse order.

The accompanying figures illustrate a trick in which the prestidigitateur, after placing a chair upon an open newspaper and seating a lady thereon, covers her closely with a silk veil, and after the words “one, two, three,” lifts the veil and shows that the lady has disappeared.

The newspaper is provided with a trap, which is concealed by the printed characters (Fig. 1). This trap is of the same size as the one that must exist in the floor upon which one operates. As for the chair, that is generally an old affair, without any cross rod in front (Fig. 2). It is provided with a movable seat that lowers in order to allow the lady to pass between the two front legs. It is provided, besides, with a frame of wire which is invisible on account of the feeble diameter of the latter, and which, attached to the back, is turned backward on the side opposite the spectator. As soon as the lady who is to be made to disappear is seated (Fig. 3), she causes the frame to tilt and cover her head and shoulders. This operation is hidden by the veil that the prestidigitateur spreads out at this moment in front of the lady.

At this instant the operator actuates a spring, which opens the trap in the floor. The lady passes between the legs of the chair (Fig. 4), and then through the two traps, the one in the paper and the one in the floor. As soon as she reaches the floor beneath the stage she closes the trap in the newspaper with gummed paper, and shuts the one in the floor, and it might be thought that she was still on the stage, although she has disappeared. In fact, the veil, on[43] account of the wire frame, seems always to outline the contours of the vanished subject.

After the operator has said “one, two, three,” he lifts the veil and causes the wire frame to fall back.

Since this trick was first introduced it has been more or less perfected or modified in its form, but the preceding description states the methods generally employed in performing the trick. In some cases if the newspaper is carefully examined, it will be found to be made of India rubber and to contain a large rent at about the center. In the next chapter will be described an interesting illusion called “She,” in which the lady disappears while being supposed to be cremated. This ingenious trick depends for a portion of the effect upon mirrors, so it is placed with the other illusions requiring the aid of mirrors.

[44]

A trick known by the name of the Indian Trunk, the Mysterious Trunk, the Packer’s Surprise, etc., formerly had much success in theaters of prestidigitation. This trick, which may be presented in several ways, is executed by different means, one of which we shall describe.

The following is in what the experiment consists: The prestidigitateur has a trunk brought to him, which he allows the spectators to examine. When every one is certain that it contains no mechanism, a person comes upon the stage and enters the trunk. It is found that he fills it entirely, and the cover is shut down. A spectator locks the trunk and guards the padlock.

The trunk is afterward wound in all directions with rope, the intersections of the latter are sealed, and the whole is introduced into a bag provided with leather straps, and which may in its turn be sealed at each of its buckles. When the operation is finished, the spectators who have aided in the packing remain on the spot to see that nothing makes its exit from the trunk, which has been placed upon two wooden horses. The prestidigitateur then fires a pistol over the trunk, which, when divested of its covering, ropes, and unbroken seals, is found to be entirely empty.

The whole credit of the trick is due to the cabinet maker who constructed the trunk. The latter, in the first place, is exactly like an ordinary trunk, and the closest examination reveals nothing out of the way about it. Yet one of the ends, instead of being nailed, is secured by a pivot to the two long sides, so that it can swing. The swinging motion is arrested by a spring plate bolt. When the person in the interior presses upon a point corresponding to this bolt, the pivot turns freely and the end of the trunk swings.

The following is the way that the operation is performed in order that the spectators may not perceive the opening of the trunk. The operator’s assistant takes his place in the trunk, which is closed and locked and the padlock sealed. Some obliging spectators then aid in tying the trunk, around which the rope is passed twice lengthwise, beginning at the side opposite the opening part. The rope is then passed over this part and runs in the axis of the pivots. Then the trunk, for the convenience of tying, is tilted upon the end where the rope passes. It is then that the assistant inclosed in the interior presses the bolt. The end of the trunk then has a tendency to open, and as the prestidigitateur has taken care to tilt the trunk at a carefully marked point of the stage floor, the movable end meets in the latter with an exactly similar trap that opens at the same time, and it is through these two traps that the invisible vanishing takes place. As soon as the assistant has passed through the trap, he pushes up the latter, and consequently the movable end of the trunk, which closes upon its spring plate bolt.

The time that it takes the man to pass through the trap is insignificant,[45]
[46] and while the ropes are being crossed the operation might be performed several times. Afterward, there is nothing to be done but to proceed with the experiment as we have said, care being taken, however, not to abuse the complaisance of the spectators, and not to allow them to try the weight of the trunk.

When the vanished person descends beneath the stage, he is supported by some other individual if the theater is not well appointed, and by a trap with a counterpoise if the construction of the stage admits of it. This trap permits of expediting things in certain cases of the reappearance of the confederate, but is useless in the process described above.

Such is one of the artifices employed. Whatever be the process, the presentation of it is often complicated by causing the person who has vanished to reappear in a second trunk that has previously been ascertained to be empty and that has been sealed and enveloped under the eyes of the spectators. It will be easily comprehended that the operation here is reversed, and that the confederate beneath the stage awaits the proper moment to be lifted into the interior of the second trunk, whose movable end is opened outwardly by the prestidigitateur at the desired moment.

Boxes with glass sides also have been constructed. The management is the same, but, as the person inclosed is visible up to the last moment, care must be taken to so pass the ropes as not to interfere with the trap of the trunk, which then consists of one of the sides, and which operates at the moment when the trunk, bound with ropes, sealed and laid upon this side, is about to be wrapped up. This presentation has still more effect upon the spectators than the preceding, and seems to present greater difficulties.

Among the most remarkable experiments performed by prestidigitateurs should be cited that of the Indian basket, which, as its name indicates, is of Asiatic origin. Travelers in Hindostan have often told us that the Indians practice this wonderful trick upon the public places. The Indian magician makes use of an oblong osier basket provided with a cover. He takes a child and incloses it in this basket, and around the latter buckles a belt. Grasping a sword, he thrusts it into the basket here and there, and pulls out the blade all dripping with blood.

The spectacle is shocking, and the feelings of the spectators become wrought up to a high pitch. The magician then opens the basket, which, to the surprise of all, is empty.

At a few yards distance cries are heard proceeding from the child who had been inclosed in the basket, and who is now running forward sound and happy. Robert-Houdin, who studied this juggler’s trick, explained it perfectly, and was[47] able to perform it himself. The basket used by the Indian prestidigitateurs is represented herewith.

Fig. 1 shows the basket open ready to receive the child. For the sake of the explanation we have cut away one end. This basket is provided with a double movable bottom, A C B, the center of motion of which is at C. In order to make the child disappear, the cover being closed, the top of the basket is lowered by turning it toward the spectators (Fig. 2). But the bottom, B, and the part A, that depends upon it, do not take part in this motion. The weight of the child lying upon the bottom forces the latter to remain in place, and by this fact the part A C shuts off the bottom of the basket (Fig. 2).

In order to turn the basket over, the Indian fastens it with strips of leather, and, to facilitate this operation, places his knee on it. The child can then easily hide himself under the robe worn by the magician. Replacing the basket in its first position, the Indian inserts his sword and sticks the blade into a small sponge fixed within and saturated with a red liquid. While the attention of the spectators is absorbed by this exciting operation, the little Indian escapes from beneath the robe, and runs a short distance from the spectators without being seen. Houdin says that when this trick is well performed, it has a startling effect. In all the preceding tricks the magician has made way bodily with assistants, we now come to a case of mutilation in which the luckless clown must suffer decapitation.

[48]

The means employed in this illusion is the old-fashioned “defunct” method of decapitation, and although this lacks the refinement and scientific interest of execution by electricity, it has a certain precision.

The poor clown who suffers the death penalty twelve times a week usually enters the circus ring, or appears on the stage, as the case may be, and after performing certain acrobatic feats, commits some crime against his fellows, for which he is condemned to die. He is placed upon the block; his head is covered with a cloth. Harlequin approaches as executioner, and begins to cut with a huge knife across the victim’s neck. In a moment all is over, the cloth is removed, and Harlequin lifts in the air the severed head. Delighted with his trophy, he carries it about under his arm, places it in a charger in the center of the ring, and finally takes it back to the block wrapped up in the cloth, and places it by the side of the headless trunk. He removes the cloth, and[49] then in sport places a lighted cigarette in its mouth. In a little while you notice that the cigarette begins to glow, smoke comes from the nose, and the eyes roll. Evidently the head has come to life. Not able to bear the horrible sight, he throws the cloth again over the head, seizes it, places it in its original position on the shoulders of the victim, kneads it to the body, and suddenly the figure rises, head and all, and bows to the audience—an orthodox clown. The trick is a good one, and takes with the audience. The way in which it is done is explained in the second cut.

As soon as the clown lies on the box and his head has been covered with the cloth, he passes his head through an invisible opening in the top of the box. An assistant inside of the box passes up the dummy head, which is an exact facsimile of the clown’s head and face. This is seized by Harlequin, who makes such sport of it as he sees fit. When he places it by the side of the trunk, in reality he passes it through an opening in the top of the box to the assistant within, who substitutes his own head (which is painted to match the other two) in place of it. The other steps in the performance readily follow.[50] The cloth which the harlequin always carries conceals all the sleight of hand, and the whole performance is a series of surprises.

Another performance of a somewhat similar character was recently performed at a theater in New York, in which a clown throws himself on a sofa and is cut in two by a harlequin. One part of the sofa with the body remains in one part of the stage while the other part with the legs and feet (which are all the time vigorously kicking) disappear through a wing at the other end of the stage. The action is very sudden and the effect startling. Of course, in this case there are two men similarly dressed. The head and body of one of them appears at the head of the sofa, while the body of the second clown is concealed in the box under the seat at the other end of the sofa, the feet and legs alone being exposed.

The following article is not written with the intention or desire to antagonize any believer in Spiritualism, but merely to explain how anti-spiritualists, as well as several professional “mediums,” secured their release after being fastened in their cabinet. During the years the writer (Mr. Caulk) has been before the public as a magician and cabinet performer, he has met a number of cabinet test “mediums,” and can safely say that all of these people who have come under his observation have been imposters. This may be due, however, to the bad fortune of the writer.

The writer has been tied with ropes, fastened with handcuffs, brass collars, and chains, many times in many different cities, and by people who were just as alert as any investigator of spiritualistic phenomena, yet, unlike many “mediums” he has met with, was never exposed.

The methods used are many, some simple, others complicated, but all mystifying. To the average auditor the most wonderful point is, how does the performer release himself after being so securely bound? For the benefit of the curious the writer will explain a few of the methods by which he has secured his release after being fastened by a committee from the audience. All anti-spiritualists, as well as several “mediums” personally known to the writer, make use of these same methods of release, or others founded on the same principle.

Among the many successful rope tests, the following is about the best. A piece of soft cotton rope about six feet long, and of the size known as sash cord, is securely tied around the performer’s left wrist, dividing the rope so that the ends will be of an equal length. When the committee is satisfied that they have made the knots secure, the performer places his hands behind him, with the right wrist resting over the knots on the left wrist, and the ends of the rope are securely tied together, bringing the knots down tight on the right wrist. This appears fair enough, but it is not as fair as it appears, because,[51] while the knots are secure enough, there is sufficient slack between the wrists to enable the performer, by giving his right wrist a half turn, to withdraw this hand from the rope encircling it.

The reader may say, “That is all well enough, but how and by what means does he secure this slack?”

In placing his hands behind him after the rope is tied about the left wrist, he gives the rope a twist and knot with over the other, pressing the twist down on the knot and covering the twist and knot with the right wrist, which is then tied. When ready to release himself, the performer gives his right hand and wrist a half turn, releasing the twist lying on the knot, which thus becomes a part of the loop tied around the right wrist, and enlarging it sufficiently to enable the performer to pull the right hand free from the rope, when he can perform any trick he chooses with the free hand. Our first and second engravings show the formation of the twist, thus making the above explanation clear. By replacing the hand in the loop and giving the hand a half turn the knots can be shown as secure as when first tied.

The “Spiritualistic Post Test” is among the latest and most successful of mechanical fastenings. A piece of wood four inches square and three feet long is given to the committee, who bore a hole through it near one end, and then pass an ordinary rope through the hole, tying a knot in the rope on each side of the post, pressing the knots against the post so that the rope[52] cannot be drawn through the post. The ends of the rope are now unraveled, and the post secured to the floor of the cabinet.

The performer, standing behind the post, places his wrists against the knots in the rope, one on each side of the post, and the unravelled ends of the rope are bound around his wrists and tied securely, and all knots are sealed with wax. A large nail is driven in the top of the post, to which are fastened cords that are passed out through the cabinet and held by members of the committee in order that they may know if the performer moves the post in any manner during the performance of any test, such as the ringing of bells, etc. Fig. 2[53] of our third engraving shows the performer tied to the post and the committee holding the cords. The curtains of the cabinet are closed and the usual manifestations take place.

Before the performance a hole is bored in the center of the end of the stick or post, in which is placed a chisel-shaped piece of steel sharpened at the lower end and blunt at the upper end, as shown in Fig. 3. The opening in the end of the post is now carefully closed and all signs of such an opening are concealed by the aid of glue, sawdust, and a little dirt rubbed over it.

When the committee are invited to bore a hole in the post, the performer takes care to start the bit, in order that there will be no mistake about getting the hole directly beneath the chisel concealed in the post. When the rope is passed through the hole and knotted it is directly under the sharp edge of the chisel, with a thin layer of wood between. When the nail is driven in the top of the post it strikes the chisel, forcing it through the thin shell of wood above the rope and through the rope, thus releasing the performer, who can withdraw his hands from the post and do any trick he chooses, and when finished, by merely replacing the ends of the rope in the holes from which he removed them, and holding the hands tight against the post, can allow a most rigid examination of the seals to show that it was not possible for him to have released his hands, and the persons holding the cords that are fastened to the nail testify that they did not feel any movement of the performer or the post.

The Handcuff Test is a great favorite of the “medium.” In this test the performer uses any pair of handcuffs furnished by the audience, and by them put on him. Yet, in a very few moments after he takes his place in the cabinet, his coat is thrown out, but on examination the handcuffs are found to be on his wrists just as they were placed by the audience. As a final test, the performer comes out of the cabinet holding the handcuffs in his hand, removed from the wrist but locked.

The explanation of this trick is very simple, but, like many simple tricks, very mysterious. There are only a few styles of handcuffs made in this country, and all that a “medium” has to do is to secure the proper key for each style, which keys are concealed about the person, and by the aid of fingers and teeth the proper key can be fitted to the handcuffs. In some types of handcuffs it is impossible[54] to get the fingers to the key-hole. If such a pair is placed on the performer and he cannot use his teeth to hold the key, he slips the key in a crack in the chair or cabinet, which crack he makes sure is there before undertaking the test, thus holding the key and unlocking the handcuffs.

As the space allotted for this article is limited, the writer will explain but one other piece of apparatus used to secure the “medium,” which is known as the Spirit Collar.

The collar is made of brass, and fits closely about the performer’s neck. Through the openings in the ends of the collar is passed a chain, after the collar is on the performer’s neck, and this chain is passed around a post, carried back and through the padlock which is used to lock the collar. By this arrangement the performer is fastened securely to a post, at least it appears so to the audience. This collar is shown in our fourth engraving. As seen by the cut, the collar is decorated with a number of small bolts, which impart to it an additional appearance of strength.

These bolts are all false with one exception. This genuine bolt can be removed by the performer when the collar is on his neck, thus allowing the collar to come apart at the hinge, as shown in the cut, thus releasing the performer, allowing him full liberty to perform any trick he wishes, and permitting him to again apparently fasten himself securely. This loose bolt fits so securely that there is no danger of any of the committee removing it with their fingers. The performer uses a small wrench to remove the bolt.

[55]

The prestidigitateur has always been indebted more or less to the use of reflection from mirrors and plate glass as an important adjunct in conjuring. Many of the illusions in the succeeding pages have often been used as an entertainment in themselves so that it might really be termed “side show science.” Without doubt the most famous of all the illusions in which effects of lighting are used is “Pepper’s Ghost” which was devised by that eminent experimentor on physical and chemical science, John Henry Pepper. There are a number of variations of the Pepper Ghost of which the “Cabaret du Neant” is an excellent example.

The name “Cabaret du Neant,” or “Tavern of the Dead” (“non-existing”), has been given by the proprietors to a recent Parisian sensation; it was also exhibited in New York. The interest of course centers in the ghost illusion.

The spectators on entering the Cabaret pass through a long hall hung with black and find themselves in a spectral restaurant. Along the walls coffins are placed for tables, and on the end of each coffin is a burning candle. From the center of the ceiling hangs what is termed “Robert Macaire’s chandelier,” made to all appearances of bones and skulls. The spectators are here at liberty to seat themselves at the tables and are served with what they desire by a mournful waiter dressed like a French mourner with a long crape streamer hanging from his silk hat. Around the walls of the room are placed pictures to which the spectator’s attention is called by the lecturer. Seen by the light of the room these pictures are ordinary scenes, but a new aspect is given to each when lights directly behind it are turned on; the figures in it appear as skeletons, each picture being in fact a transparency giving a different effect as it is lighted from the rear or as seen simply by reflected light. The second chamber is now entered; it is hung with black throughout. On the walls tears are painted, and in close juxtaposition are two somewhat incongruous inscriptions, “Requiescat in pace,” and “No smoking.” The reason for the latter admonition,[56] which is also given by the lecturer, is that for the success of the illusion an absolutely clear atmosphere is essential. At the end of this second chamber, at the back of a stage, is seen a coffin standing upright, in which one of the audience is requested to place himself. Entering the stage by the side door, he is conducted by an attendant to the coffin and placed in it. Blocks of wood are placed for him to stand on in quantity sufficient to bring his head to the right height so that the top of it just presses against the top of the coffin, and the attendant with great care adjusts his height according to the predetermined position. Two rows of Argand burners illuminate his figure, which is then wrapped in a white sheet. Now, as the spectators watch him, he gradually dissolves or fades away and in his place appears a skeleton in the coffin. Again, at the word of command the skeleton in its turn slowly disappears, and the draped figure of the spectator appears again. The illusion is perfect to the outer audience; the one in the coffin sees absolutely nothing out of the common. His interest, if he knows what is going on, is centered in watching the changing expression of the spectators, being increased by the fact that at their period of greatest astonishment he is absolutely invisible, although directly before them and seeing them more plainly than ever. After the restoration to life one or more auditors are put through the same performance, so that the recent occupant of the coffin can see what he has gone through.

The third chamber is now entered, somewhat similar to the second, but on[57] its stage is a table and seat, all the walls being lined with black. One of the auditors is invited to seat himself at the table on the stage. He does it, and, as before, sees nothing. While the description of the lecturer and the appearance and comments of the audience tell him that something very interesting is going on, the remarks will probably disclose to him the fact that this time at least he is never out of their sight. He leaves the stage and his place is taken by another, and then he understands the nature of the drama in which he has been an unconscious participator. He sees the other spectator seated alone at the table. Suddenly a spirit, perhaps of an old man, appears at the other side of the table, while a bottle and glass are seen upon the table. When exhorted to help himself to the liquid, the performing spectator’s idle gestures show that he certainly does not see the glass, through which his hand passes unobstructed. Or perhaps it is a woman who appears and makes the most alluring gestures toward him who never sees her. This concludes the exhibition, which as accessory has the strains of a funeral march, the ringing of deep-sounding bells as room after room is entered, and the appearance of a brown-robed monk who acts as Charon to introduce the spectator to his place in the coffin. In one of our illustrations we show, side by side, the coffin with its living occupant draped in a sheet and in the other the skeleton which appears in his place. Two other cuts show the scenes between the spectator at the table and the specters, illustrating how active a part the specters take, they being no mere painted appearances, but evidently living, moving things. Our large illustration shows precisely how it is done and so clearly that an explanation is hardly needed. The floor of the stage is represented. To the left are seen the spectators and the performer at the piano discoursing his lugubrious melodies. To the right is seen Charon, and directly in front of him the coffin with its living occupant. When lighted up by the burners shown near him, the other burners being turned down, the coffin with its occupant is all that is seen by the spectator.[58]
[59] Directly in front of the coffin, crossing the stage obliquely, is a large sheet of the clearest plate glass, which offers no impediment to the view of the coffin with its occupant, when the latter is fully illuminated. At one side of the stage, in the back of the picture, is a painting of a skeleton in a coffin with its own set of Argand burners. It is screened from view. When strongly illuminated, and when the lights of the real coffin are turned down, the spectators see reflected from the glass a brilliant image of the pictured coffin and skeleton. By turning up one set of burners as the others are turned down a perfect dissolving effect is obtained, skeleton replacing spectator and vice versa at the will of the exhibitor.

The magic lantern operator always realizes that to secure a good dissolving effect perfect registration is essential. In the securing of this lies the secret of the coffin exhibit of the Cabaret du Neant. By the blocks on which the occupant of the coffin stands, and by the adjustment of his head by the attendant, the head is brought into perfect registration with the reflected head of the skeleton. The wrapping with the sheet, presumably the enveloping in a shroud, is done with a purpose. It covers the body from the shoulders down and extends to the very bottom of the coffin, covering the blocks also, thus doing away with all defects of registration which would be incurred in the persons of spectators of different heights. In other words, the exhibition fits out everybody with a skeleton of precisely the same height, however tall or short he may be, the draping of the sheet and accurate position of the head concealing from the spectators this inaccuracy, the skull occupying precisely the place of the head, the rest taking care of itself.

Still referring to the large cut, it will be seen that it serves to explain the exhibition in the other chamber. Instead of the coffin there is the table and chair, and in place of the pictured skeleton a live performer is placed. In this act there is no dissolving effect; by turning up the lights at the side of the[60] stage any object desired and performers dressed as spirits are made to appear upon the stage, being reflected from the glass plate. The spectators simultaneously see their companion sitting at the table and the reflections of the ghosts apparently executing their movements about him.

From the scientific as well as scenic aspect, the exhibition is most interesting, and to one who knows how it is performed, the interest is vastly enhanced. To properly enjoy it, the stage position should be taken during one or both performances.

In this illusion the spectators are separated from the stage by a balustrade—behind which is seen the curtain. In a few moments the latter is drawn back and there is distinctly seen a woman’s body the lower part of which is hidden by a basket of flowers. This body has three heads, one in the middle and two others grafted at the base of the neck of the first. The heads move their eyes, answer questions and sing, and finally salute the audience, and the curtains are drawn together and the performance is over. As in many tricks of this kind the showman usually announces that for an additional admission the secret of the illusion will be divulged. The visitor then enters the side scene and perceives that on the little stage where the phenomenal woman just appeared, nothing is visible but a large plate of glass slightly inclined towards the audience and its edges hidden by drapery. Behind the mirror there is a recess whose sides are covered with a jet black fabric. In front of the mirror on the stage sits the basket of flowers from which issued the woman’s body. On an inclined board which rests against the screen or balustrade lie three young girls; one of these, the middle one, is clothed in a brilliant costume of light-colored silk, and it is she who in the exhibition makes trunk, arms, and the middle head. The lower part of her body[61] is covered over with a black fabric and she is supported by a cushion which permits the two other girls to place their necks closely against hers. The bodies of these two girls at the sides are completely covered with fabric of a dead black color. In front of these three young women are placed powerful lights. The heads, hair, and arms of the “body” are covered with powder so as to present completely white surfaces. All the white or light-colored surfaces being strongly lighted by the lamps reflect the light; the image is thus made upon the spectator.

This illusion, which is presented under the name of “Amphitrite,” is as follows: When the representation is about to begin, the curtain of a small stage rises. There is observed a circular aperture, cut in a screen, over which is stretched transparent muslin.

About six feet behind the latter there is a scene representing the sky with clouds; below, in the foreground, there is a canvas representing the sea.

[62]

“Amphitrite, come forth!” exclaims the person in charge of the show. All at once, a woman in the costume of an opera nymph rises from the sea without anything being visible to support her in space, in which she turns round and round, gracefully moving her legs and arms, now in one direction, and then in another. When the exhibition is at an end, she straightens out in the position of a swimmer about to make a dive, and plunges behind the curtain representing the ocean.

The illusion that we have just described may be performed as follows: Amphitrite is an image—a specter analogous to those of Robin. If we imagine that a transparent glass, M M, in our diagram, is inclined 45° with respect to the stage, a person clad in light clothing, lying horizontally upon a black background beneath the stage, and well illuminated, will exhibit an upright image behind the glass. This image will appear to be formed in front of the back canvas, T T. Now, as Amphitrite is lying upon a table, P P, she will be able to go through her evolutions and bend herself in a circle; and if, during this time, the table, movable upon its axis, A, is revolved, her image will turn in all directions. Finally, to cause Amphitrite to appear or disappear, it will suffice to slide the table upon rails, thus bringing it in front of or behind the glass. Amphitrite should be placed upon an absolutely black background. Her costume should be of a light color with metallic spangles, and she should be illuminated by a powerful electric light.

The muslin stretched in front of the screen is designed to arrest anything that jesters might throw against the glass, and which, sticking thereto might explain a part of the mystery.

[63]

In this illusion which was presented at the “Folies Bergères,” at Paris, the stage is rather larger than in most of the talking heads and other analogous tricks. At a short distance from the spectator is observed a woman cut off at the thighs and resting on a small swinging shelf. The showman moves the shelf laterally, and at a signal the exhibitor removes the shelf, and the half-length body appears suspended in the air. The question which every visitor asks is, where is the rest of the body? In many of the tricks of talking heads, isolated busts, etc., the illusion is obtained by the aid of mirrors, but the mystery of Dr. Lynn is obtained in a much simpler manner. All painters know that in a very strongly lighted picture the bright colors stand out at the expense of the half-tones and dark colors, and this effect is greater as the light becomes brighter. It is upon this principle that the Dr. Lynn trick is based. The lower part of the bust seen is a dummy upon which the upper part of the woman’s body lies, the remainder of her body being extended nearly horizontally upon a board which is capable of swinging and following the motion of the shelf. All this portion is hidden by opaque black drapery so arranged as not to reflect the light at any point. The bust and shelf receive a very intense light; then immediately behind there is seen intense darkness, forming an absolutely dark background. The latter is rendered still darker by the brilliant cords of the shelf, a metallic chain and a dagger suspended beneath it, as well as a white handkerchief which seems to have been dropped upon the stage by accident. At least six powerful gas burners or electric lights with reflectors are turned towards the spectators, so that it will be seen that the latter are in a manner dazzled by everything that strikes the eye in the foreground, and that beyond this they see absolutely nothing but a black background.

Another variation of the illusion of the “Decapitated Princess,” which will be described later on, is obtained without the aid of mirrors. A young girl[64] appears before the audience, accompanied by an executioner clad in red, and armed with the traditional axe of his profession. The curtain then drops, and rises in a few moments, the stage being somewhat darkened. Near the executioner can be perfectly distinguished the girl’s head lying on a round table at the back of the stage. The body is seen lying on the bed a few feet from her head and at her side is the fatal block that had served for execution. The trick is the same as the preceding one; it requires, however, two persons of the same size, wearing the same costume, to carry out the illusion successfully. One of these, the one who shows herself to the public, makes the head, her body being hidden behind the cloth in the rear of the stage, which is in darkness, as has just been explained. The other, who makes the body, has her head bent far back and hidden in a sort of box, a false cardboard neck contributing to increase the illusion.

To the Yogi and Mahatmas of India, the magicians and illusionists of Europe and America are indebted for the ideas of many of their best tricks and illusions. While the published reports of many of the alleged marvelous effects produced by the “wonder workers” of India must be taken with a very large amount of salt, yet we must give these people due credit for being the originators of many tricks from which the modern magician has taken principles on which he has founded and created several of the grandest and most successful illusions of modern times.

Take, for instance, the illusion known as “Black Art,” or the “Midnight Mysteries of the Yogi,” made famous in this country by those master minds of magic, Harry Kellar and the late Alexander Hermann. The weird illusion is founded on an idea advanced by the Yogi of India.

No doubt nearly all of the readers of this article have seen “Black Art” presented by one of the above named magicians, yet the number who could advance a plausible explanation of how it was done, are very few, because as soon as one thinks that he has discovered the secret, the performer produces an effect in direct variance with the principle on which the illusion appears to be founded.

In this illusion the entire stage from the first groove to the rear is hung with black velvet, the floor covered with black felt, and the top is covered with black velvet, thus forming a large room lined entirely in black. The regular footlights are turned out, and a special set are used, that consist of a row of open gas jets placed on a line with the boxes, and carried up the outside of the black room, as shown in the large engraving.

The lights throughout the entire house are either turned very low or put out, with the exception of the special lights mentioned above.

[65]

[66]

The curtain rises, disclosing the black chamber. In a moment the magician appears, dressed in a white suit; a wave of his hand, and a white wand appears floating in the air, which the magician secures. A wave of the wand, and a table appears on the right, then a second table appears on the left. A large vase appears on one of the tables, and a second vase appears on the magician’s outstretched hand. Both of the vases are shown and proven empty, and in one is placed a few orange seeds, and the wand is passed over the vase, which instantly becomes filled with oranges. The oranges are poured into the second, then returned to the first vase, when they disappear as quickly and as mysteriously as they appeared, and the vases are again shown empty, and again placed one on each of the tables. A borrowed watch is placed in one of the vases, from which it disappears and is found in the vase on the other table. A life-size skeleton now appears and dances around the stage, becomes dismembered, the separated parts floating about, but they finally rearticulate themselves, and the skeleton vanishes. Now a rabbit is seen in one of the vases, from which it is taken by the performer, and in his hands it becomes two, which are tossed in the air and disappear.

The number and style of tricks performed in the mysterious black chamber[67] are almost unlimited, but an explanation of the ones mentioned above will suffice to show how “Black Art” is performed.

While the stage is draped in black, everything that appears is painted white, and the magician is dressed in white. There is an assistant on the stage all through the act, but as he is dressed in black, with gloves on his hands and a hood over his head, made of black velvet, he is not seen by the spectators, whose sight is somewhat dazzled by the open gas jets. The tables are on the stage, but covered with pieces of black velvet, rendering them invisible. The second engraving shows how the assistant removes the piece of velvet and causes a table to appear at the magician’s command.

The vases are also sitting on the stage, but covered with pieces of black velvet. By picking up the covered vases the assistant can cause them to appear, by removing the velvet, one on the table and the other on the performer’s hand. The oranges are in a black velvet bag, from which the assistant pours them into the vase. To cause the oranges to vanish, the magician, instead of pouring them into the vase, pours them into the open mouth of a large black bag held by the assistant just over the lower vase. The transposition[68] of the watch from one vase to the other is just as easy. The assistant merely removes it from the vase in which the performer placed it, and places it in the second vase. The manipulation of the rabbit is equally simple. The assistant places the first one in the vase by means of a black bag in which it was concealed, then places the second one in the performer’s hands from a second small bag. In vanishing the rabbits the performer merely tosses them up into a large open-mouthed black bag held by the assistant.

The skeleton is made of papier maché, painted white, and fastened on a thin board that is sawed to shape and covered with black velvet. One arm and one leg are jointed so as to be readily removed and replaced by the assistant when he is operating the skeleton. The last two illustrations fully explain the method of construction and manipulation of the skeleton.

The tables are made either of wood or papier maché and painted white. The vases are made of papier maché, painted white on the outside and black on the inside. The reason the inside of the vases are painted black is to prevent the hand of the assistant beings seen when he places it in the vase.

This is one of the most expensive of stage illusions, costing several hundred dollars to properly stage it with the best drapery and accessories, and unless such are used the proper illusory effect is lost. In magic as well as in other business, cheap apparatus is dear at any price.

[69]

Probably the most common of all of the illusions which depend upon mirrors is the Talking Head upon a table. The illustration is almost self-explanatory. The apparatus consists only of a mirror fixed to the side legs of the table. The mirror hides the body of the girl, who is on her knees and seated on a small stool, and reflects the straw which covers the floor so as to make it appear continuous under the table; likewise it reflects the front leg of the table so as to make it appear at an equal distance from the other side and thus produce the illusion of the fourth leg. It also reflects the end of the red fabric hanging in front of the table and thus makes it appear to hang down from behind. The visitor stands only a few inches away from the table and head. Such proximity of the spectator and actor would seem to favor the discovery of the trick, but on the contrary it is indispensable to its success.

This illusion is a very ingenious improvement on the “Talking Head.” On entering the small booth in which it is usually exhibited, we perceive[70]
[71] an elegant little room decorated with flowers and lights and hung with tapestry. In front there are two railings and the floor is covered with a carpet. In the center is seen a small table on which rests a kind of three-legged stool supporting a cushion and the half body. The lady shows she has arrived by moving her arms and head and speaking and singing. The visitor can see the four legs of the table and can perfectly distinguish the space under the stool, the whole scene being brilliantly lighted, contrary to the usual custom in any such illusions. The secret of the illusion is as follows:

The stool is formed only of a hollowed out disk whose supports are connected by two mirrors that make with each other an angle of forty-five degrees. These mirrors rest on the top of the table which was decorated in regular designs in mosaic and reflect the latter in such a way that they seem to continue uninterruptedly under the stool. The table presents an analogous arrangement, its side legs being connected with the middle one by two mirrors. These mirrors reflect not only the designs of the carpet which by their continuity produce the illusion of a vacancy, but also two table legs located on each side behind the railing, as shown in our small engraving: the mirror to the left transmits to the spectators on that side the image of the leg placed on the left and this image seems to them to be the fourth leg of the table. The mirror to the right plays the same rôle with regard to the spectators on that side. These mirrors in addition hide the lower part of the girl’s body.

[72]

During the season of 1891-92, among various interesting things to be seen at the Eden Musée, perhaps the most interesting, and at the same time the most scientific, was the weird spectacle entitled “She,” exhibited by Powell, the well-known illusionist, and suggested by the Cave scene in H. Rider Haggard’s celebrated novel “She.”

In this scene a beautiful young lady mounts a table arranged in an alcove formed by a folding screen. Above the victim is suspended a cylindrical cloth screen. The screen is lowered to the level of the table, completely inclosing the subject. The table apparently has four legs, and four candles shown beneath it indicate that the space underneath the table is open and clear. The cylindrical screen is shown to be entire, with openings only at the upper[73]
[74] and lower ends, and no openings are seen in the folding screen which partly surrounds the table. Upon the firing of a pistol the occupant of the table is ignited, and smoke and flame bursting from the screen indicate that the work of destruction is going on within. When the fire is burned out the screen is lifted, and nothing remains upon the table but a few smouldering embers and a pile of bones surmounted by a skull. Close observation does not reveal any way of escape for the young woman. It is, however, obvious that the magician cannot afford to sacrifice such a subject every evening, and the spectators are forced to conclude that the whole affair is a very clever trick. In fact, it is simply a modification of the beheaded lady and numerous other tricks based upon the use of plane mirrors. The table has but two legs, the other two which appear being simply reflections. The central standard supports but two candles, the other two being reflections. Underneath the table, and converging at the central standard, are arranged two plane mirrors at an angle of 90° with each other and 45° with the side panels of the screen. By means of this arrangement the side panels, which are of the same color as the central or back panel, are reflected in the mirror and appear as a continuation of the back panel. The triangular box, of which the mirrors form two sides, has a top composed in part of the table top and in part of mirror sections for reflecting the back panel, or with a covering of the same color as the back panel.

The operation of the apparatus is now obvious. When the victim is inclosed by the cylindrical screen, she immediately escapes through a trap door in the table top, places the bones and the fireworks upon the table, and at the firing of the pistol ignites the latter and retires, closing the trap door after her.

One of Mr. Kellar’s recent illusions is what he is pleased to call “The Queen of Flowers.” Our first engraving represents the stage as the audience sees it, and the last cut will help to explain it to the reader. The background, set against curtains, is about ten feet long and eight feet high, and represents a mass of flowers and bushes indiscriminately thrown together, with[75]
[76] blue sky above. There is a little flat roof which projects out about three feet from the bottom of the screen and is supported by four red poles. The bottom is a floor raised about a foot from the stage, and in front of each of the three divisions made by the poles between the stage proper and the floor of this improvised summer house is placed an electric light. The audience usually wonders what these lights are for in this strange place; but as audiences always accept anything shown them by the prestidigitateur, these lights do not disturb them very much except by dazzling them, as they are meant to do. So much for the setting. There being no doors or screens or curtains of any kind, the spectators have the satisfied feeling that there is no deception there, for they can see all there is to see. They can, that is true, only they don’t realize how much they are seeing.

Mr. Kellar next brings a semicircular stand which he places in front of the middle panel at the height of the floor. At the roof is fixed a brass rod in the form of a semicircle, from which hangs a curtain inclosing the little stand. This, however, cannot do much good, for, as Mr. Kellar says, those on the extreme right and left of the audience can still see quite behind the curtain, through the summer house, and they believe him, not only because he told[77] them so, but because they can see with their own eyes. What could be more convincing! In a moment the curtain is withdrawn and a beautiful lady surrounded by flowers is seen standing on the little platform.

The last engraving will explain matters. The lines extending from the two center poles to the background represent double mirrors; that is, each mirror consists of two mirrors back to back, running from the floor to the roof of the summer house. On account of the indefinite arrangement of the flowers painted on the back scene in monotonous design, the spectators do not notice the mirrors. These, of course, form a passageway through which anyone can walk from behind the scenes to the stand behind the curtain, while the audience is still keeping guard with its ever watchful eye.

In this illusion the exhibitor states that it is the head of an Egyptian Princess who was accused of treason and beheaded. The head is exhibited in[78] a curtained recess and it reposes upon two swords lying across the arms of the chair. The chair is upholstered in red plush and is placed close to the curtain at the back of the recess. At the back of the chair is an opening just below the level of the tops of the chair arms. This opening is not seen from the front, as it is concealed by a mirror that is placed between the arms of the chair at an angle of 45°. The ends of the mirror rest in folds of the fan-shape upholstering on the inside of the chair arms. The lower edge of the mirror is resting on the bottom of the chair and the upper edge is concealed by laying one of the swords on it, as may be seen in the other illustration. At the proper angle the bottom of the chair is reflected in the mirror, leaving the impression that one is looking at the back. The folds in the upholstering of the inside of the arms effectually conceal the ends of the mirror. There is a hole in the rear curtain directly opposite the hole in the chair back, through[79] which there passes a board supported at one end by resting on the seat of the chair and at the other end by a small box or any convenient article.

The lady who is to impersonate the princess takes her position on this board with her chin just above the edge of the mirror, the second sword is placed at the back of her head and a wide lace collar that she wears around her neck is adjusted so as to rest nicely on the two swords. The second illustration shows the board in position, passed through the curtain, with the lady lying on it, her head on the swords and the lace collar in position. The curtain in the rear must be close to the chair, but the side curtains are removed about five feet. The board is padded so as to make the lady as comfortable as possible.

The following illusion is similar to the “Decapitated Princess.” A small stage is partitioned off by curtains. In the center of the stage, suspended in space, is a young girl’s head, the neck of which starts from a satin collar. This head is isolated on every side. One sees the rear of the stage, the sides, the top and the bottom, and the brilliant illumination leaves no portion in shadow. The head speaks and smiles and finally blows out a lighted candle. The exhibitor then disappears behind the side scenes with the candle.[80] He now, as it seems, draws out a panel in the back of the stage, and through the aperture thus formed the spectator very distinctly sees the top of a table and upon it a candle which the head has just extinguished. Now this aperture is directly under the head, but much farther off, and is in the direction the body would occupy if the head possessed one. The absence of the body is therefore apparently demonstrated to the visitors.

The illusion was obtained by means of a simple mirror which starting from the upper part of the back of the stage descended obliquely to the front. In the center of this there was an opening which was concealed by the satin collar and through this the young girl passed her head. The inclination of the mirror was, in fact, indicated by a gold rod designed to hide the junction of the mirror and the side. The arrangement will be better understood by reference to the annexed diagram, which belongs to the same illusion, only the clown is substituted for the girl’s head.

Now, by virtue of the optical law that “an object reflected from a mirror appears to be behind the latter at a distance equal to that which separates it from it,” every point of the line, M l, reflected from the mirror, P M, will appear to be situated upon the line, M L.

So, to the spectator located at O, the point, c, reflected at C′ will appear to be the point, C; the distance, c C′ equaling C C′. The point, l, reflected at L′, will appear to be L. And it will be the same for all the intermediate points. The spectator, then, will believe that he sees the line, M L, when in reality he sees only the reflection of M l. Now, as we have just said, he will believe that he sees the back of the stage, when, in fact, he sees nothing but a reflection of the ceiling in the mirror. In the same way, the reflection from the front of the ceiling will produce the illusion of the stage floor. This fact still further contributes to increase the illusion, for the spectators are not aware of the difference that exists between the arrangement of the place where the bust appears and of that of the place where the showman is walking.

In the illusion of “Stella” the aperture through which the table was seen was in reality at the top. The table was vertical and the candle which was firmly fixed to it was horizontal. The farce of blowing out the candle and carrying it behind the scenes was only designed to make the spectators believe it was the same candle that was seen at the rear of the stage, when in reality it was only a duplicate.

[81]

These apparatus were formerly much employed by magicians—Robert-Houdin, for instance. The following is an example of one of the scenes that may occur with them:

When the curtain rises, there is seen in the center of the stage a large, dark-colored cabinet, ornamented with mouldings, and mounted upon legs that are a little longer than those of ordinary cabinets, the object being to remove all possibility of a communication with the stage beneath. These legs are provided with casters. The showman turns this cabinet around and shows that there is nothing abnormal about it externally. He then asks some of the spectators to come up close to it, and lets them examine its interior, which is entirely empty. There is no double bottom, nor any hiding-place. When the witnesses have made themselves certain of this fact, they station themselves around the stage, and a certain number of them even consent to remain behind the cabinet and see nothing of the experiment. The cabinet being thus surrounded on all sides, and every one being able to look under it, fraud would seem to be an impossibility.

A young woman dressed as a danseuse then comes on the stage and enters the cabinet, and the doors are closed upon her. In a few moments the doors are opened again, when, lo and behold! the closet is empty, the young woman having disappeared. Then the doors are closed again, and then opened, and the danseuse makes her appearance; and so on. At the end of the experiment the witnesses examine the cabinet again, and finding nothing changed therein, are justly stupefied.

In another style of cabinet there is no bar in the center, as shown in our engraving, but there is observed on one of the sides in the interior a bracket a few centimeters in length, and, back and above this, a shelf. This arrangement permits of performing a few experiments more than does the one just described. Thus, when the woman has disappeared, the showman allows a young man to enter, and he also disappears, while the young woman is found in his place. This is a very surprising substitution.

The box into which the harlequin takes refuge, and which appears to be empty when Pierrot or Cassandra lifts the curtain that shields its entrance, is also a sort of magic cabinet.

In a series of lectures delivered a few years ago at the London Polytechnic Institution, a professor of physics unmasked the secret of some of the tricks employed on the stage for producing illusions, and notably that of the magic cabinet. The lecturer, after showing the cabinet, and causing the disappearance therein of an individual while the doors were closed, repeated the same experiment with the latter open. But, in the latter case, so quick was the[82]
[83] disappearance that the spectators could not even then see how it was done. The illusion produced by the apparatus is the result of a play of mirrors.

In the first cabinet described, when the exhibitor has closed the doors upon the young woman, the latter pulls toward her two mirrors that are represented in our plan of the cabinet by the lines, G G. These mirrors are hinged at O O, and, when swung outward, rest by their external edges against the bar, P, and then occupy the position shown by the dotted lines, G′ G′. When the cabinet is again opened, the woman placed at A is hidden by the two mirrors; but the appearance of the interior of the cabinet is not changed, since the spectators see the image of each side reflected from the corresponding mirror, and this looks to them like the back of the cabinet.

The illusion is perfect. When the experiment is ended and the mirrors are again swung against the sides, at G G, the spectators see nothing but the backs of them, which are covered with wood; the cabinet is really empty, and no one can discover what modification has taken place in its interior during the disappearance of the woman.

In the second arrangement, which is shown in vertical section in our last engraving, the young man gets up on the shelf, c n, at the upper part of the cabinet, by the aid of the bracket, T, and then pulls down over him the mirror, b c, which was fastened to the top of the cabinet. This mirror, being inclined at an angle of 45°, reflects the top, and the spectators imagine that they see the back of the cabinet over the shelf, as they did before.

The box which Harlequin enters is based upon precisely the same principle. Its interior is hung with paper banded alternately blue and white. When Harlequin enters it, he places himself in one of the angles and pulls toward him two mirrors which hide him completely, and which reflect the opposite side of the box, so that the spectator is led to believe that he sees the back of it. In this case, one of the angles at the back of the box is not apparent, but the colored stripes prevent the spectator from noticing the fact.

[84]

We present an engraving of a very interesting optical illusion produced with only three mirrors. By multiplying the mirrors the large number of different effects can be obtained.

Let us imagine that three perfectly plain and very clear mirror glasses, as large as possible, form a prism whose base is an equilateral triangle. A person placed in the interior of this prism will see his image reflected a very large number of times. A very simple geometrical construction, and one which we recommend our young readers to carry out as an exercise in optics, by the simple application of the principle that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection, allows us to see that the image of any point whatever placed in the center of this triangle of glass plates will be reproduced indefinitely by groups of six images distributed symmetrically around points regularly spaced in the prolongations of the planes of the three glasses.

A person, therefore, sees his image reproduced indefinitely in groups of six until, the successive reflections attenuating the intensity of the images, the latter cease to be visible. Three or four persons massed in one of the angles present the illusion of a compact and mixed crowd standing upon a sidewalk and awaiting the passage of a procession. The hats waving in the air convert the peaceful waiting into an enthusiastic manifestation, which is so much the more surprising in that it is made by but half a dozen persons at the maximum.

The accompanying figure gives an idea of this remarkable effect, and the three persons, whose images reflected ad infinitum produce the curious result that we call attention to, would have much trouble to believe that they were the subject of an illusion.

Upon the whole, the experiment is nothing more than an application of the principle of the old kaleidoscope enlarged and revived, in the sense that the observer has before his eyes the successive reflections of his own image, and that the objects are replaced with living beings movable at will.

Five or six persons may occupy, at the same time, the triangular prism, of which the sides are about six feet wide, and which they enter through a trap in the floor. When these five or six persons are walking about in all directions, they present the aspect of a tumultuous and agitated crowd commenting upon grave events.

[85]

[86]

Platinized glass plates are no longer a novelty, but the illusion is very effective. The mirrors give an image in the ordinary way when looked at by reflected light, but are transparent when observed by transmitted light. The metalization of glass with platinum was discovered a great many years ago by the Messrs. Dodé. This property of transparency by transmitted light affords a very clever surprise. The mirrors are set in frames. In a panel behind the latter there is an aperture closed by a shutter. As the glass is transparent there may be seen through it, when the shutter is open, everything that is on the other side, so it occurred to the inventors to utilize this transparency by placing an image or photograph between the panel and the glass. On exposing the mirror to the light to look at one’s self in the ordinary way, if the shutter is open, the human head will disappear and may be replaced by the photographic[87] portrait or a horned devil, which is placed behind the mirror. In the illustration we illustrate the head of the devil whose body is hidden by two mirrors inclined at an angle of forty-five degrees, as in some of the illusions we have already described. As he moves his head and smiles, the effect is rather startling. Electric light is used to illuminate the trick.

[88]

At the Italian exhibition held a few years ago in the Champ de Mars, Paris, there was a statue that attracted much attention from the visitors. It represented Goethe’s Marguerite standing before a mirror. This latter gave by reflection the image of Faust, as shown in our engraving. The artifice was well concealed by the sculptor. In reality, it was not a double statue, but the figure of Faust was skillfully obtained by means of the folds of Marguerite’s robe.

Marguerite holds her arms in front of her, and these same arms form those of Faust, who holds them crossed behind his back. Faust’s face is carved in Marguerite’s back hair, and the man’s figure is obtained, as before stated, by means of the folds of the woman’s robe.

[89]

The tricks in this chapter are no less interesting than those which have gone before, but are rather of a more miscellaneous nature. The first trick which we shall describe, is called “The Illusion of Trilby.”

The late Professor Herrmann won for himself a firm place in the regards of the civilized world, representing the fin de siècle Houdin. His carefully executed work, with its perfect detail and finish, was a standard among performances of natural magic, and other exhibitions are referred to it as the gage of their quality. In Herrmann’s illusion of “Trilby,” hypnotism is supposed to play a part. As will be seen, it is really an ingenious application of mechanics.

A plank is placed upon the backs of two chairs. A lady performer who is supposed to represent Du Maurier’s “Trilby” enters and, stepping on a foot-stool, lies down upon the plank. She holds a bouquet in her hand, which bouquet,[90] unknown to the audience, has its own part to play. The other performer, Herrmann, who is supposed to be Svengali, carefully arranges the drapery, walking around her as he does so. Then he makes some passes, and one by one removes the chairs, and the lady and board remain in the air. In response to his passes the lady, still resting on the board, rises, and the position changes to an inclined one and back to the horizontal one. Finally the chairs are replaced, the lady by passes is supposed to be waked from her trance and steps down, chairs and plank are removed, and nothing is to be seen further.

Two of the cuts show the progress of the performance as seen by the audience. The third cut explains the mechanism. Behind the scenes is a strong frame, up and down which a movable slide works. Tackle is provided to raise and lower the slide; and a workman behind the scenes is intrusted with its manipulation. A bar carrying at its rear end handles, and in front a socket, shown in the upper right-hand corner of the same cut, is journaled in the slide, and can also be thrust in and out through the journal box.

When Trilby has been placed upon her board couch, the bar is thrust forward, drapery at the back having hitherto concealed its socket end. The fair Trilby with her bouquet now effectually conceals it as it emerges from behind the curtains. The performer, while apparently sedulously arranging the drapery, guides the socket and causes it to grip the board. The assistant behind the scene pulls upon the tackle and works the handle, so that Trilby’s[91] weight leaves the chairs one by one, which are removed, and, supported by the bar, she seems to float in air. By manipulating the tackle she can be raised and lowered. By the handles she can be tilted about, giving a wonderfully good effect. Finally the chairs are replaced, and the assistant lowers Trilby upon them. During the waking passes the socket is detached and the bar is withdrawn. A close observer may notice a slight agitation of the drapery or curtains behind the stage as the bar is pushed out and withdrawn, but the attention of the audience in general is so taken up with the performance proper that this disturbance is overlooked by them.

The magician, it will be seen, can only walk completely around the reclining lady before the bar is in place or after it is withdrawn. When the bar is in place, he can walk behind her, but cannot go completely around her. Hence his complete excursions are restricted to the time when she is resting on the chairs, before the bar is in place or after it has been withdrawn.

After the board is vacated, Svengali throws it down upon the stage, its fall, with accompanying noise and disturbance, showing that there is no deception about that portion of the display.

The supreme happiness of sitting in a swing which apparently whirls around its points of support, giving the occupant what is most properly described as a new sensation, may now be enjoyed by all. It is termed the “haunted swing,” and has been in most successful operation at Atlantic City and at the Midwinter Fair near San Francisco. Those who are to participate[92] in the apparent gyrations of the swing—and there may be quite a number who enjoy it simultaneously—are ushered into a small room. From a bar crossing the room, near the ceiling, hangs a large swing, which is provided with seats for a number of people. After the people have taken their[93] places, the attendant pushes the car and it starts into oscillation like any other swing. The room door is closed. Gradually those in it feel after three or four movements that their swing is going rather high, but this it is not all. The apparent amplitude of the oscillations increases more and more, until presently[94] the whole swing seems to whirl completely over, describing a full circle about the bar on which it hangs. To make the thing more utterly mysterious, the bar is bent crank fashion, so that it seems demonstrably impossible for the swing to pass between bar and ceiling. It continues apparently to go round and round this way, imparting a most weird sensation to the occupants, until its movements begin gradually to cease and the complete rotation is succeeded by the usual back and forth swinging, and in a few seconds, as the children say, “the old cat dies.” The door of the room is opened and the swinging party leave. Those who have tried it say the sensation is most peculiar and the deception perfect.

The illusion is based on the movements of the room proper. During the entire exhibition the swing is practically stationary, while the room rotates about the suspending bar. At the beginning of operations the swing may be given a slight push; the operators outside the room then begin to swing the room itself, which is really a large box journaled on the swing bar, starting it off to correspond with the movements of the swing. They swing it back and forth, increasing the arc through which it moves until it goes so far as to make a complete rotation. The operatives do this without special machinery, taking hold of the sides and corners of the box or “room.” At this time the people in the swing imagine that the room is stationary while they are whirling through space. After keeping this up for some time, the movement is brought gradually to a stop, a sufficient number of back and forth swings being given at the finale to carry out the illusion to the end.

The room is as completely furnished as possible, everything being, of course, fastened in place. What is apparently a kerosene lamp stands on a table, near at hand. It is securely fastened to the table, which in its turn is fastened to the floor, and the light is supplied by a small incandescent lamp within the chimney, but concealed by the shade. The visitor never imagines that it is an electric lamp, and naturally thinks that it would be impossible for a kerosene lamp to be inverted without disaster, so that this adds to the deception materially. The same is to be said of the pictures hanging on the wall, of the cupboard full of chinaware, of the chair with a hat on it, and of the baby carriage. All contribute to the mystification. Even though one is informed of the secret before entering the swing, the deception is said to be so complete that passengers involuntarily seize the arms of the seats to avoid being precipitated below.

The peculiar gun shown in the cut is named after its inventor, Alessandro Scuri, of Liège, Belgium. M. Scuri is also known as the inventor of a unicycle and a quadruple cornet. The “scurimobile” is a gun with two barrels[95]
[96] which can be aimed at different objects, the angle between the barrels being adjustable. The adjustment is effected by moving a ring located on the under side of the gun. The pivot of the barrels is so arranged that it is easy to sight two objects at the same time. Both cartridges are automatically ejected after each shot fired. It is also possible to use only one barrel in the ordinary way. In the cut the inventor is shown aiming at two balls placed about a yard apart. Another valuable feature of this new gun is its applicability as a range finder. The observer first sights two objects which are at about equal distances from him, and measures the distance or angle between the two barrels, a graduation being provided for this purpose. Then the same operation is made from a point more distant from the objects first sighted. If the observer steps back ten yards, and finds that the graduation indicates just one-half of the value obtained at first, he will know that in the second position he was just twice as far from the objects as in the first position, so that the objects are ten yards from the observer’s first position. This operation will give distances with sufficient accuracy in most cases, but more exact results can be obtained by means of a simple trigonometric formula when the angle between the barrels is measured.

The X rays, after becoming the indispensable coadjutors of surgeons, and even of physicians, are now competing with the most noted mediums in the domain of the marvelous.

M. Radiguet, the well known manufacturer of physical apparatus, has been devoting himself for a long time to experiments with the Roentgen rays in the laboratory, which is encumbered with electric lamps, lamp globes, and glass apparatus of all kinds. One day he perceived that these glass objects, under the action of the X rays, shone in the darkness. Here again was an amusing and perhaps a useful experiment due to accident. Useful, because the radiographs obtained up to the present, by means of artificial screens, have been really good only when the sensitive bodies have been in small crystals. In a pulverulent state they are nearly insensible to the X rays, and it is almost impossible to obtain the grain of the screen upon the photographic plate. It is easy, on the contrary, to work the glass in such a way as to prevent any irregularity in the radiograph. Such experiments will certainly be made ere long, but, for the present, it is the fantastic side of the discovery that we shall present to our readers.

Porcelain, enamels, and diamonds, and also objects covered with platino-cyanides (used by Roentgen) and with calcium tungstate, zinc sulphate, etc., have, like glass, the property of becoming luminous in darkness under the action of the X rays. We have, therefore, only the trouble of selection in[97] order to get up a “spirit séance” with every certainty of success, while genuine spiritual séances fail in most cases, as well known, because the spirits are in an ill mood and disposed to be coyish.

The following will prove a scene sufficiently weird to put the most intrepid worldlings in a flurry if some one of our friends takes it into his head to give[98] them the mysterious spectacle thereof before they have read an exposure of the trick.

The first figure that we present herewith exhibits a Ruhmkorff coil, which is placed here to show the operation in its entirety. But, as the first effect of[99] its vibrations would be to attract the attention, and consequently the suspicions of the spectators, whom it is a question of transporting into the domain of the marvelous, this apparatus is relegated to some distant room. The current that produces the X rays is led into the Crookes tube by wires. This apparatus, moreover, which is not very bulky, may be placed behind a door or be concealed under black cloth. The objects designed to become luminous are placed as near to the tube as possible. In the experiment under consideration a diner (who is doubtless near-sighted, since he wears eyeglasses) is about to do justice to his breakfast. Armed with a knife and fork, he attacks his beefsteak; but he is assuredly a greater eater than drinker, since he contents himself with water, while his light consists of a single candle.

A black curtain on the other side of the table conceals from the spectators a skeleton covered with zinc sulphide.

Let us now put out the light and set the Ruhmkorff coil in action. What a surprise! A plate, a glass, a water bottle, and a candle shine in space with the light of glow-worms.

A sinister guest in the form of a skeleton sits opposite the place occupied by the near-sighted gentleman, who has disappeared, and whose eyeglasses alone have held their own before this ghastly apparition. Finally, to complete the illusion, hands are seen moving over the heads of the spectators, and those multiply, and then disappear, only to appear anew.

It must be remarked that, in order to render the experiment more conclusive, it is allowable for the most incredulous members of the party to tie the gentleman tightly to his chair, and, if they desire, to hold his hands and feet during the entire time of the experiment. It is scarcely necessary to explain how the latter is performed. The X rays pass through the black cloth on the door that conceals the Crookes tube and also through the body of the gentleman, and render luminous the glass objects covered with zinc sulphide. As for the mysterious hands, those are simply gloves covered with the same substance and fixed to the extremity of long sticks that are moved in all directions by confederates.

Such scenes may naturally be varied to infinity; and the spirit of invention is so fertile, there is no doubt that before long ladies will be giving a place in the programme of their soirées to this up-to-date spiritualism.

[100]

This illusion is a variation of the enchanted “death’s head” which was for a long time the attraction of the Robert-Houdin Theater. Our engraving shows both the “death’s head,” the “mask of Balsamo,” and the method of producing the illusion. Under the influence of the passes of the prestidigitateur the skull on the glass plate bends forward and seems to salute the spectators. The nodding of the “death’s head” was utilized in a number of ways, as, to indicate the number when dice was thrown. This trick was performed as follows: Upon a table near the magician was placed a ball of soft wax attached to a string which ran to the side scenes, where it could be pulled by a confederate. After passing the skull around to be examined, the prestidigitateur, in laying it upon the table, fixed the ball of wax at the top of it. After the experiment a simple scraping with the finger nail removed every trace of the trick. The Isola Brothers used electricity in a somewhat similar illusion. The skull is replaced by a wooden mask laid flat on a small table and the mask answers questions by rocking slightly. The magician then brings the table into the midst of the spectators, and the mask still continues to move, to the astonishment of the onlookers. The secret of the trick is that part of the wood which forms the chin is replaced by a small strip of iron which is painted the same color as the mask so that it cannot be seen; an electro-magnet is let into the top of the table so that the cores shall be opposite the strip of iron[101] when the mask is laid upon the table. Contact is made by means of a push button somewhere in the side scenes, the wires run under the stage, and connection is made through the legs of the table when the legs are set on the foreordained place. Upon the same principle is Robert-Houdin’s heavy chest and magic drum. A rapping and talking table may be made by carrying out the same idea. The battery is carried in the lower part of the table, where the three legs join. The top of the table is in two parts, the lower of which is hollow and the top being very thin. In the center of the hollow part is placed an electro-magnet, one of the wires of which connects with one of the poles of the battery, while the other is connected with a flat metallic circle glued to the cover of the table. Beneath this circle and at a slight distance from it there is a toothed circle connected with the whole pole of the battery. When the table is pressed lightly upon, the cover bends and the flat circle touches the toothed one. This closes the circuit, and the electro-magnet attracting the armature produces a sharp blow. When the hand is raised the circuit is broken, producing another sharp blow. By running the hand lightly over the table the cover is caused to bend successively over a certain portion of its circumference. Thus contact is made at a number of places, and the sharp blow is replaced by a quick succession of sounds. This table is very useful for spirit rappings; as the table contains all of the mechanism in itself, it can be moved to any part of the room. The table may be also operated from a distance by employing conductors passing through the legs of the table and under the carpet. By substituting a small telephone receiver for the electro-magnet, the rapping spirits may be made talking ones.

Electric insects may be constructed on the same plan and give a very life-like appearance when placed on an artificial bunch of flowers in a flower pot.[102] The battery is concealed in the top. When the pot is raised a drop of mercury which occupies the bottom of the pot will roll over the bottom, closing the circuit successively on different insects, keeping them in motion until the pot has been set down.

At the end of the last century and the beginning of the present, a very curious experiment, and one which was looked upon as marvelous by the credulous, was wonderfully popular at Paris. The representation took place[103] at the old Capuchin convent. The spectator entered a well lighted hall in which, in part of a window, there was a box suspended by four brass chains attached by bows of ribbon. The box, which was surrounded by a grating, was provided with two panes of glass that permitted of seeing that it was absolutely empty. To one of the extremities was fixed a speaking trumpet. When a visitor spoke in the latter, he was answered by a hollow voice; and when he placed his face near the box, he even felt upon it the action of a mysterious breath. When he presented any object whatever in front of the mouthpiece, and asked the voice to name it, an answer immediately came from the speaking tube. The box was suspended freely from the ceiling, and it could be made to swing at the extremity of the chains; it was empty and isolated in space. People were lost in conjecture as to the secret of the experiment. Among the unlikely theories that were put forth was that of the invisibility of a person obtained by unknown processes.

As usual in these kinds of impostures, there was here merely an ingenious application of a scientific principle. A physicist, E. J. Ingennato, revealed the mystery in a pamphlet published in 1800 under the title of “The Invisible Woman and Her Secret Unveiled.” This tract, now rare, had for a frontispiece the engraving which we reproduce herewith and which explains the whole experiment. The invisible woman of the Capuchin convent was named Frances, and the following is the explanatory legend appended to the original engraving:

“Questioner: ‘Frances, what is this that I have in my hand?’

“Frances (after looking through the little peep-hole, D): ‘A stick with a crooked handle.’

“The entire assembly at once: ‘It is incomprehensible!’”

Ingennato, in his pamphlet, explains that above the ceiling there was a low, darkish chamber, in which Frances was concealed, and that she looked at the object presented to her through a small aperture, D, which was skillfully hidden by a hanging lamp, and then answered through the speaking tube, B B B, hidden in the wall. The sound traversed a space of about six inches, that separated the speaking tube from the speaking trumpet.

The experiment which we are about to describe, while it is thoroughly scientific, was taken up under the name of “Æolian Harps” by Robert-Houdin, who introduced several modifications of it. When the experiment was performed by Wheatstone in 1855, four harps were arranged in a semi-circle on the stage of the Polytechnic Institution. These harps, at the pleasure of the experimentor, vibrated as if they were made to resound by invisible hands.[104] This effect was produced by fixing to the sounding board of each of them vertical rods of fir-wood which passed through the floor of the stage and ceilings, into the cellar of the Institution, where one of them was fixed upon a sounding board of a piano, another upon the sounding board of a violoncello, and two others upon the sounding boards of violins. In order to render it possible to interrupt the vibrations between the instruments and the harps, the rods supporting the latter were divided at two inches above the floor. Each harp could be cut off from communication with the instrument below by turning it around upon its axis. When Robert-Houdin introduced the illusion, he used a stage elevated in the very midst of the spectators. This stage was traversed by two fir-wood rods which, after passing through the floor, rested upon harps placed in the hands of skillful players. At the command of the prestidigitateur two other harps supported upon the upper extremity of the rods executed a concert which was very successful, thanks to the careful preparations and the elegant mise en scène. Of course the harps were supposed to operate through the intervention of mediumistic spirits.

[105]

Having described some of the illusions which are produced with the aid of elaborate outfits, we now come to the more simple tricks which are produced with smaller and less expensive apparatus, and, sometimes, with no apparatus at all. In the old days the man of mystery appeared on the stage clad in a robe embroidered with cabalistic figures, the ample folds of which could well conceal a whole trunkful of paraphernalia. The table in the center of the stage was covered with a velvet cloth embroidered with silver, and its long folds, which reached the ground, suggested endless possibilities for concealment. All of these things have now passed away, and the modern magician appears clad in ordinary evening dress, which is beyond the suspicion of concealment. The furniture is all selected with special reference to the apparent impossibility of using it as a storeroom for objects which the prestidigitateur wishes to conceal. Some of the easiest and simplest of modern tricks that anyone with little or no practice can perform are very effective. The tricks in this chapter are far from being all which have been published in the Scientific American and the Scientific American Supplement, but they are believed to be the best which have been published in those journals.

In this trick we have an egg in an egg-cup, which the prestidigitateur covers with a hat, and then he rolls a small silk handkerchief between his hands, as shown in Fig. 1. As soon as the handkerchief no longer appears externally, he opens his hands and shows the egg, which has invisibly left the place that it occupied under the hat, while the handkerchief has passed into the egg-cup (Fig. 3). We shall now explain how these invisible transfers are effected.

Two eggs, genuine and entire, were truly placed in plain view in a basket, but it was not one of those that served for the experiment. Behind the basket was placed a half shell, C, of wood (Fig. 2), painted white on the convex side, so as to represent the half of an egg, and on the concave side offering the same aspect as the interior of the egg-cup, A, to which it can be perfectly fitted in one direction or the other, as may be seen in the section in Fig. 2. It is this shell, inclosing a small handkerchief exactly like the first,[106] that the prestidigitateur placed upon the egg-cup (Fig. 2). Then, while with the left hand he covered the whole with a hat with which he concealed the operation, he with the right hand quickly turned the shell upside down. The shell, therefore, by this means disappeared in the egg-cup, and the handkerchief, spreading out, assumed the appearance that it presents in Fig. 3.

The prestidigitateur, having afterward secretly seized with his right hand a hollow egg of metal, containing an oval aperture (F, Fig. 2), stuffed into it the handkerchief that he seemed simply to roll and compress between his hands. It is almost useless to add that the metallic egg may be easily concealed either with the palm of the hand that holds it, or with the handkerchief.

In prestidigitation flowers have in all times played an important part, and they are usually employed in preference to other objects, since they give the experiments a pleasing aspect. But, in most cases, natural flowers, especially when it is necessary to conceal their presence, are replaced by paper or feather ones, the bulk of which is more easily reduced. Such is the case in the experiment which we are about to present, and which, it must be confessed, requires to be seen from some little distance in order that the spectators may, without too great an effort of the imagination, be led into the delusion that they are looking at genuine flowers. However, even seen close by, the trick[107] surprises one to the same degree as all those that consist in causing the appearance of more or less bulky objects where nothing was perceived a few moments previous.

The prestidigitateur takes a newspaper and forms it into a cone before one’s eyes. It is impossible to suppose the existence here of a double bottom, and yet the cone, gently shaken, becomes filled with flowers that have come from no one knows where. The number of them even becomes so great that they soon more than fill the cone and drop on and cover the floor.

The two sides of the flowers employed are represented in Fig. 2, where they are lettered A and B. Each flower consists of four petals of various colors, cut with a punch out of very thin tissue paper. Upon examining Fig. A, we see opposite us the petals 1, 2, 3, and 4 gummed together by the extremities of their anterior sides, while Fig. B shows us the petals 2 and 3 united in the same manner on the opposite side. A small, very light and thin steel spring, D, formed of two strips soldered together at the bottom, and pointing in opposite directions, is fixed to the two exterior petals, 1 and 4, of the flower, and is concealed by a band of paper of the same color, gummed above. It is this spring that, when it is capable of expanding freely, opens the flower and gives it its voluminous aspect.

Quite a large number of these flowers (a hundred or more), united and held together by means of a thread or a rubber band (Fig. 2, C) makes a package small enough to allow the operator to conceal it in the palm of his hand, only the back of which he allows the spectators to see while he is forming the paper cone.

[108]

In lectures on chemistry, the professor, in speaking of aniline colors, in order to give an idea of the coloring power of certain of these substances, performs the following experiment:

Upon a sheet of paper he throws some aniline red, which, as well known, comes in the form of iridescent crystals. He shakes the surplus off the paper into the bottle, so that it would be thought that nothing remained on the paper. If, however, alcohol, in which aniline colors are very soluble, be poured over the paper, the latter immediately becomes red.

This experiment may be varied as follows: Instead of scattering the aniline over paper, it is dusted over the flowers of a white rosebush, and the flowers are shaken so as to render the dust invisible, and then when a visit is received from an amateur of horticulture, we tell him that we have a magic rosebush in our garden, the flowers of which become red when alcohol or cologne is poured over them. The experiment is performed with the aid of a perfumery vaporizer, and the phenomenon causes great surprise to the spectators who are not in the secret.

[109]

A trick that has contributed much toward making one of our leading magicians such a favorite with the fair sex, is one in which a bush filled with genuine rosebuds is caused to grow in a previously-examined pot that contained nothing but a small quantity of white sand.

After the bush is produced, the flowers are cut and distributed to the ladies, and by many recipients of the magician’s favors these buds are looked upon as a production of fairy land. For many years this trick has occupied a prominent position on the programme of the magician in question, and mystifies the audience as much to-day as ever, thus proving how well magicians keep their secrets from the public. The trick is not a difficult one by any means, yet, regardless of its simplicity and the ease with which it may be performed, the florist would find it anything but an economical method of raising roses, as a perusal of the following will show.

On the stage is seen two stands with metal feet, and with long rich drapery trimmed with gold fringe. On each of the stands is a miniature stand on which are flower-pots.

The magician passes the pots for inspection, then places them on the stands, and plants a few flower seeds in each pot. A large cone, open at both ends, is shown, and can be carefully examined. One of the pots is covered for a moment with the cone, and on its removal a green sprig is seen protruding from the sand, the seed having sprouted, so the magician says. Now the second pot is covered for a moment with the cone, on the removal of which a large rosebush is seen in the pot, a mass of full-blown roses and buds. The first pot is again covered for a moment with the cone, and when uncovered a second rosebush is seen, equally as full of roses as the other. The cone is once again shown to be empty.

A small basket or tray is now brought forward, on which the roses and buds are placed as the performer cuts them from the bushes, after which they are distributed to the ladies.

The stands are not what they appear, as the drapery does not extend entirely around them, but quite a space at the back of the stand is open. There is a small shelf attached to the stand leg, near the bottom of the drapery. Three cones are used, of which the audience see but one.

The rosebushes are merely stumps to which are attached a base of sheet lead, cut of such a size as to fit nicely in the flower-pots, resting on the sand. To the stumps the genuine roses are attached by tying with thread. When the bushes are prepared they are suspended inside of cones, by means of a stout cord that is fastened to the stump by one end and to the other end of which is attached a small hook, which hook is slipped over the edge of the upper opening of the cone. When the bushes are placed in the cones, these cones are placed on the shelves at the back of the stands. Reference to the second[110]
[111] engraving will make the arrangement of the shelf, back of stand, and position of concealed cone plain to all. There is a variance in the size of the cones. The cone shown to the audience is slightly larger than the cone that is behind the first stand, and the cone behind the second stand is a fraction smaller than either of the others. Thus the cones will fit snugly one in the other, in the order named.

After the performer has shown the pots, planted the seed, and placed the pots on the small stands, which are used to convince the spectators that there is no connection between the pot and the large stand, he shows the large cone, which is nicely decorated, and covers the top of the pot on the first stand, as he says, to shut out the light, that the seed may germinate. Between the fingers of the hand holding the cone, he has concealed a small metal shape, painted green, which he drops through the cone into the pot. In a moment he removes the cone from over the pot, and in a most natural manner passes it down behind the stand and over the concealed cone containing the rosebush, and carries this cone away inside of the larger one. At the same moment he picks up the flower-pot and carries it down and shows the green sprout in the sand.

The performer now steps to the second stand and covers the flower-pot on it with the cone. As soon as the pot is covered, he slips off the small hook supporting the rosebush, which drops into the pot; the weight of the lead base keeps it in position while the cones are being removed.

When the performer removes the cone—or cones, we should now say, as we have two now in place of one, although this fact is unknown to the audience—he passes it down behind the stand, over the concealed third cone, picking it up with the second rosebush inside. He now returns to the first stand, covers the pot, and by slipping off the hook holding the rosebush in position, and removing the cone, or cones, properly, from the pot, shows the second rosebush. He now turns the large cone so the audience can see through it, and as the upper and lower edge of each cone is blackened, there is no danger of the inside cones being seen. The rear of the stand tops are something of a crescent shape, to facilitate the passing of the large cone down behind the stand in a graceful manner.

[112]

The trick that we are about to describe, although old, is very interesting. The prestidigitateur comes forward, holding in his hand a small cardboard box which he says contains various kinds of flower seeds.

“Here there is no need of moisture, earth, or time to cause the seed to germinate, the plant to spring up, and the flower to bloom. Everything takes place instantaneously. Would not a rose in my buttonhole produce a charming effect? A stroke of the wand upon the seed deposited in the desired place, and see! the rose appears. A few seeds are in this little box (Fig. 1, A) that we shall cover for an instant so that it cannot be seen how flowers are born. It is done; let us take off the cover; violets, forget-me-nots, and Easter daisies are here all freshly blown.

“You are suspicious, perhaps, and rightly, of the little tin box, and more so of its cover. Well, then, here is a small goblet, the transparency of which is perfect, and this borrowed hat with which I cover it can have undergone no preparation. Let us remove it quickly, for the flowers—What! no flowers? Ah! it is because I forgot to sow the seeds. Let us begin the operation over again. What flowers do you want—a mignonette, a violet, a marigold? Here is a seed of each kind, which I shall put into the glass. Now let each one tell me the flower that he prefers. Now I cover the glass and count three seconds. See the magnificent bouquet!” (Fig. 3.)

[113]

Finally the trick is finished by taking from the hat a number of small bouquets that are offered to the ladies. The following is an explanation of the various tricks, beginning with that which involves the boutonnière of the magician himself.

This is a stemless artificial rose of muslin, which is secured by a strong black silk thread arrested by a knot. To this thread, which should be five or six inches in length, is attached quite a strong rubber cord capable of being doubled if need be. The free extremity of the rubber traverses, in the first place, the left buttonhole of the coat, and then a small eyelet formed beneath, and then passes over the chest and behind the back, and is fixed by the extremity to one of the right-hand buttons of the waistband of the trousers.

When the prestidigitateur comes upon the stage, the rose is carried under his left armpit, where he holds it by a slight pressure of the arm. At the proper moment he raises his wand toward the right, and looks in the same direction in order to attract the eyes of the spectators to that side; but at the same time he separates his arms slightly, and the rose, held by the taut rubber, suddenly puts itself in place. The magic effect produced by the instantaneous appearance of this flower, coming whence no one knows where, could not be appreciated without having been seen.

In the second appearance of flowers, produced by means of the small apparatus shown in Fig. 2, there is really nothing very mysterious. The special object of it is to bring into relief the experiment that is to follow, and in which, evidently, there can be no question of double bottom. Moreover, the diversity of the means employed contributes powerfully toward astounding the spectators.

Fig. 2 shows in section the three pieces of the apparatus, which are placed separately upon the table in Fig. 1. A is the cylindrical tin box in which the seeds are sown, and B another box of slightly larger diameter, but in other respects just like the first, which it entirely covers. To the bottom of B is fixed a small bouquet of artificial flowers. By slightly squeezing the cover, C (which is of thin brass), toward the bottom, the box, B, with the bouquet, is lifted. If, on the contrary, the box is left upon the table, the spectators do not perceive the substitution made, and think that they all the time see the first box, whence they believe the flowers started.

This is the most interesting part of the experiment.

As we have said, the glass is first covered with a hat, and the prestidigitateur feigns astonishment upon seeing that the flowers have not appeared, but[114] at the very instant at which the hat is lifted, when all eyes are fixed upon the glass, looking for the bouquet announced, the operator, who, with the right hand, holds the hat carelessly resting upon the edge of the table, suddenly sticks his middle finger in the cardboard tube fixed to the handle of the bouquet, which has been placed in advance upon a bracket, as shown in Fig. 1, and, immediately raising his finger, introduces the flowers into the hat, taking good care (and this is an important point) not to turn his gaze away from the glass to the bouquet or hat, as one might feel himself led to do in such a case. This introduction of the bouquet should be effected in less than a second, after which the hat is held aloft, while with the left hand some imaginary seeds, the kinds of which are designated in measure as they are taken, are selected from the cardboard box and successively deposited in the glass. So, this time, be certain of it, the flowers will appear.

There is not a second to be lost; the spectators are admiring the bouquet and are astonished to see it make its appearance. The operator very quickly profits by this moment of surprise to introduce, by the same process as before, a package of small bouquets tied together with a weak thread that will afterward be broken in the hat. We have not figured these bouquets upon the bracket, in order to avoid complication. Of course, a skillful operator will not hasten to produce the small bouquets. He will advance toward the spectators as if the experiment were ended, and as if he wished to return the hat to the person from whom he borrowed it. Afterward making believe answer a request, he says: “You wish some flowers, madam? And you too? And are there others who wish some? I will, then, empty into the hat the rest of my wonderful seeds, and we shall see the result.” It is at this moment that the spectators are attentive and that all eyes are open to see the advent of the flowers.

Prestidigitateurs frequently borrow from their spectators a hat that serves them for the performance of very neat tricks which are not always easily explained. We shall describe some of the most interesting of these.

The operator will begin by proving to you that the felt of your hat is of bad quality, and, to this effect, he will pierce it here and there with his finger, his magic wand, an egg, and with a host of other objects.

This is all an illusion, the mystery of which is explained by our first engraving. (See the finger B.) It is either of wood or cardboard, and terminates in a long slender needle. The prestidigitateur, who has concealed the finger in his left hand, thrusts the point into the top of the hat, whose interior is turned toward the spectators. Afterward raising the right hand, the forefinger of[115] which he points forward, he seems to be about to pierce the top of the hat, but instead of finishing the motion begun, he quickly seizes in the interior, between the thumb and forefinger, the point of the needle, wiggles it around in all directions, turns the hat over, and the cardboard finger, which moves, seems to be the prestidigitateur’s own finger. The same operation is performed with the wooden half egg, C, and the rod, A, which, like the finger, appear to traverse the hat, in the interior of which are hidden the true rod and egg. We may likewise solder a needle to a half of a five-franc piece, and thus vary the objects employed for this recreation to infinity.

In order to take from a hat a large quantity of paper in ribbons, and then doves, and even a duck or a rabbit, there is no need of special apparatus nor of a great amount of dexterity, and still less of the revolving bobbin or of the mysterious machine whose existence is generally believed in by the spectators when they see the paper falling regularly from the hat, and turning gracefully of itself as the water from a new sort of fountain would do.

Nor is there here any need of a high hat; a simple straw hat (or a cap, at a pinch) will suffice. The prestidigitateur holds close pressed to his breast and hidden under his coat a roll of the blue paper prepared for the printing apparatus of the Morse telegraph, and which is so tightly wound that it has the aspect and consistence of a wooden disk with a circular aperture in the center. In turning around after taking the hat, the opening of which rests against his breast, the operator deftly introduces into it the roll of paper, which has the proper diameter to allow it to enter by hard friction as far as the top of the hat, and stay where it is put even when the hat is turned over.

[116]

Were it needed, the paper might be held by a proper pressure of the left hand exerted from the exterior. The introduction of the paper is effected in a fraction of a second.

“Your hat, my dear sir, was doubtless a little too wide for your head, for I notice within it a band of paper designed to diminish the internal diameter,” says the prestidigitateur, while, at the same time, he draws from the hat the end that terminates the paper in the centre of the roll. Then he reverses the hat so that the interior cannot be seen by the spectators. The paper immediately begins to unwind of itself and to fall very regularly and without intermission to the right.

When the fall of the paper begins to slacken, that is, in general, when no more than a third of the roll remains, the prestidigitateur turns the hat upside down, and with the right hand pulls out and rapidly revolves in the air the paper ribbon, whose capricious contours, succeeding one another before the first have had time to fall to the floor, produce a very pretty effect, as shown in our second engraving. The quantity of paper extracted from the hat appears also in this way much greater than it really is, and at length forms a pile of considerable bulk.

This experiment may be completed in the following manner: The operator, approaching his table, which, upon a board suspended behind it, carries a firmly bound pigeon, quickly seizes the poor bird in passing, and conceals it under the pile of paper, while he puts the latter back into the hat in order to see, says he, whether all that has been taken out can be made to enter anew.

Having thus introduced the pigeon or any other object into the hat, the paper is taken out, and it is at the moment that the hat is restored to its owner that he pretends to discover that it still contains something.

[117]

This old trick always amuses the spectators. Some eggs are broken into a porcelain vessel, some flour is added thereto, and there is even incorporated with the paste the eggshells and a few drops of wax or stearine from a near-by candle. The whole having been put into a hat (Fig. 1), the latter is passed three times over a flame, and an excellent cake, baked to a turn, is taken out of this new set of cooking utensils. As for the owner of the hat, who has passed through a state of great apprehension, he finds with evident satisfaction (at least in most cases) that his head gear has preserved no traces of the mixture that was poured into it.

Fig. 2 shows the apparatus employed by prestidigitateurs to bake a cake in a hat. A is an earthen or porcelain vessel (it may also be of metal) into which enters a metallic cylinder, B, which is provided with a flange at one of its extremities and is divided by a horizontal partition into two unequal compartments, c and d. The interior of the part d is painted white so as to imitate porcelain. Finally, when the cylinder, B, is wholly inserted in the vessel, A, in which it is held by four springs, r, r, r, r, fixed to the sides, there is nothing to denote at a short distance that the vessel, A, is not empty, just as it was presented at the beginning of the experiment.

The prestidigitateur has secretly introduced into the hat the small cake and the apparatus, B, by making them fall suddenly from a bracket affixed to the back of a chair. That at least is the most practical method of operating.

[118]

The vessel, A, about which there is nothing peculiar, is, of course, submitted to the examination of the spectators. The object of adding the flour is to render the paste less fluid, and to thus more certainly avoid the production of stains.

The cake being arranged under the apparatus, B, in the space d, the contents of the vessel, A, poured from a certain height, fall into the part c of the apparatus; then the vessel, gradually brought nearer, is quickly inserted into the hat in order to seize therein, and at the same time remove, the receptacle, B, with its contents, and leave only the cake.

Fig. 3 shows this last operation. We have intentionally shown the part, B, projecting from the vessel, A, but it will be understood that in reality it must be inserted up to the base at the moment at which the vessel, A, introduced into the hat, is concealed from the eyes of the spectators. The prestidigitateur none the less continues to move his finger all around the interior of the double vessel as if to gather up the remainder of the paste, which he makes believe throw into the hat, upon the rim of which he even affects to wipe his fingers, to the great disquietude of the gentleman to whom it belongs.

The experiment may be complicated by first burning alcohol or fragments of paper in the compartment c of the apparatus. Some prestidigitateurs even add a little Bengal fire. But let no one imitate that amateur prestidigitateur who, wishing to render the experiment more brilliant, put into the receptacle such a quantity of powder that a disaster supervened, so that it became necessary to throw water into the burning hat in order to extinguish the nascent fire.

The following method of baking a cake in a hat is a decided improvement over the old trick with the porcelain vessel. It has the advantage of being able to be employed anywhere and of producing a complete illusion.

Before beginning the experiment, take three eggs, and having blown two of them, close the apertures with white wax. Place the three eggs upon a plate.

Within the left-hand side of your waistcoat place a flat cake, and then make your appearance before the spectators.

Having borrowed a hat, place it upon the table, and, after secretly introducing the cake into it (Fig. 4), take an empty egg, crack the shell upon the edge of the plate, and, inserting your hands in the hat, make believe empty the contents of the egg into the latter (Fig. 5).

In order that the means employed may not occur to any one, take the perfect[119] egg and let it fall upon the plate so that it will break and its contents flow out. Then take the remaining egg and operate as with the first. All you have to do then is to pass the hat back and forth a few times over the flame of a candle in order to cook the mass and then to serve the cake.

An effect due to an invisible thread is the following:

Some months ago, in a Parisian public establishment, a clown took a hat and a handkerchief, and then, after showing, by spreading it out, that the handkerchief was empty, drew an egg from the folds of the crumpled fabric and allowed it to drop into the hat. Then he took up the handkerchief, shook it out again, crumpled it up, found another egg, and let it drop into the hat, and so on. When it might have been supposed that the hat contained a certain number of eggs, he turned it upside down, and, lo and behold, the hat was empty! All the eggs from the handkerchief were reduced to a single one attached by a thread to one of the sides of the handkerchief, and which the amusing operator maliciously exhibited, after seeming to look for the vanished eggs.

While the handkerchief was stretched out, the egg was behind it, and, although it was shaken, remained suspended by its thread. In crumpling the handkerchief it was easy to seem to find the egg in it, and to put it in the hat, where it did not remain, however, for, lifted by the thread, it resumed its place behind the handkerchief. Our engraving shows the handkerchief at the moment that the egg has been removed by the thread on the side opposite that of the spectators.

On attaching a black thread, sixteen or twenty inches in length, to an empty egg, and selecting the egg thus prepared from a lot of ordinary eggs, as if by chance, we have a ready means of amusing and mystifying spectators for[120] a long time. Having hooked the free extremity of the thread to a buttonhole of the waistcoat, let us lay the egg upon the table. After apparently ordering it to approach us, it suffices to recede from the table to make the docile egg obey the command. By the same means it may be made to make its exit alone from a hat; or, again, by bearing upon the invisible thread, it may be made to dance upon a cane or upon the hand; in a word, to perform various operations that eggs are not accustomed to perform.

Upon a small rectangular tray of japanned sheet iron, similar to those in common use, are placed seven coins (Fig. 1). A spectator is asked to receive these in his hand and to put the coins back upon the tray, one by one, and to count them with a loud voice as he does so. It is then found that the number has doubled, there being fourteen instead of seven. The same operation repeated gives as a result twenty-one coins.

As may be seen in the section in Fig. 3, the tray has a double bottom, forming an interspace a little wider than the thickness of one of the coins, and which is divided breadthwise into two equal compartments by a partition, B. These two compartments are closed all around, save at the ends of the tray, where there are two apertures, A and C, that in length are double the diameter of the coins. In this interspace are concealed fourteen coins, seven on each side. When the contents of the tray are emptied into the hand of a spectator, the coins concealed in one of the compartments drop at the same time (Fig. 2). The operator then takes the tray in his other hand, and thus naturally seizes it at the end at which the now empty compartment exists, and this allows the seven coins that are contained in the other compartment to join the first ones, when the latter are rapidly emptied into the hands of the spectator for the second time.

[121]

A square tray, with a double bottom divided into four compartments by divisions running diagonally from one corner to another, would permit of increasing the number of coins four times.

Let us say, however, that skillful prestidigitateurs dispense with the double bottom. They hold the coins sometimes under the tray with their fingers extended, and sometimes on the tray, under their thumbs, and renew their supply several times from secret pockets skillfully arranged in various parts of their coats, where the spectators are far from suspecting the existence of them.

The street venders of Paris have for some time past been selling to pedestrians a coin that can be made to enter an ordinary wine bottle. This coin is a genuine ten centime piece, but, when it is handled, it is found that it bends exactly like the leaves of a dining-room table. Amateur mechanics, clock-makers, and copper turners can easily manufacture similar ones. The process is as follows:

By means of a very fine metal saw, cut the coin in three pieces, either by parallel cuts, or, better, by following the contours shown in Fig. 1. If the operation be skillfully performed, the marks of the cutting, too, will be[122] nearly invisible. Before the coin is sawed, a groove about a line in depth should be formed in the rim by means of a saw or file. In this channel or groove is inserted a very taut rubber ring, which, before it is stretched, should be, at the most, one and a half or two lines in diameter. If the rubber is well hidden in the groove, the cleft coin will appear to be absolutely intact.

Owing to this process, the coin can be easily inserted in a bottle by placing the hands as shown in Fig. 2. The hand that bends the coin covers the mouth. The coin is inserted, and then, by a smart blow given the bottle, it is made to pass through the neck. Owing to the tension of the rubber, the piece at once regains its flat form, and the operator makes it ring against the glass in order to show that it is really a piece of metal. In order to extract it, it is necessary to get the saw marks exactly in the direction of the bottle’s axis, then the bottle is slightly inclined, neck downward, and through a few blows on the latter the coin is made to drop into the hand, where it will at once assume its original form.

We shall now have a few words to say about what is called the “double sou.” The operator places the prepared coin in his hand, and calls strict attention to the fact that there is no companion piece. Then he covers it with his other hand for a moment, and finally shows two coins, instead of one, in the first hand.

Fig. 3 shows, not how the experiment is performed, but how the double coin is prepared. It is simply an ordinary sou, over which is placed a sort of hollow cover containing the impression of the coin, and which fits on the latter so accurately that the piece looks like an ordinary sou. This cover is lifted and made to slide alongside of the coin, thus showing two pieces instead of one.

The cover is stamped from a thin sheet of copper placed upon a sou serving as a mould. It might possibly be made by means of some electro-metallurgical process. The mutilation of United States coins is forbidden under penalty of the law.

Borrow a silver dollar, and have it marked, so that it can be identified. Ask some one to hold the coin horizontally between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand within the folds of a silk handkerchief, and over a glass full of water held in the left hand, Fig. 1. Your assistant’s two hands being thus occupied, you will have no sort of indiscretion to fear. Stepping back a few feet, direct your assistant to let the coin drop; and the impact against the bottom of the glass will be heard by the entire assemblage. When the handkerchief is raised the coin is no longer in the glass, but has made its way to your hand or to the pocket of a spectator. Let it be examined, and it will be found to be really the coin that has been previously marked.

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In order to perform this trick it is necessary to have a disk of glass of the same diameter as a silver dollar (Fig. 2).

Hide this disk, A (Fig. 3), in the palm of your right hand, turned toward you. This will not prevent you from holding the coin that has been confided to you between the thumb and forefinger of the same hand. While your hand is concealed by the handkerchief in which it is thought that you placed the coin, you shift the latter and give the assistant the glass disk to hold, by the edge, of course, and not by the flat surface, so that the substitution that you have made cannot be perceived by the touch.

After the trick has been performed, do not be afraid to let the person who has held the coin, and who is thoroughly astonished, examine the glass and its contents at his leisure. The glass disk is entirely invisible in the water, and if, as it is well to do, you have taken care to select a glass whose bottom is perfectly plane and of the same diameter as the disk (Fig. 2), the latter will remain adherent to the glass even when it is inverted to empty the water in order to prove once more to the spectators that it contains nothing but clear water.

Two ordinary wooden-framed slates are presented to the spectators, and examined in succession by them. A small piece of chalk is introduced between the two slates, which are then united by a rubber band and held aloft in the prestidigitateur’s right hand.

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Then, in the general silence, is heard the scratching of the chalk, which is writing between the two slates the answer to a question asked by one of the spectators—the name of a card thought of or the number of spots obtained by throwing two dice. The rubber band having been removed and the slates separated, one of them is seen to be covered with writing. This prodigy, which at first sight seems to be so mysterious, is very easily performed.

The writing was done in advance; but upon the written side of the slate, A, there had been placed a thin sheet of black cardboard which hid the characters written with chalk. The two sides of this slate thus appeared absolutely clean.

The slate B is first given out for examination, and after it has been returned to him, the operator says: “Do you want to examine the other one also?” And then, without any haste, he makes a pass analogous to that employed in shuffling cards. The slate A being held by the thumb and forefinger of the left hand and the slate B between the fore and middle finger of the right hand (Fig. 1), the two hands are brought together. But at the moment at which the slates are superposed, the thumb and forefinger of the right hand grasp the slate A, while at the same time the fore and middle finger of the left hand take the slate B. Then the two hands separate anew, and the slate that has already been examined, instead of the second one, is put into the hands of the spectator. This shifting, done with deliberation, is entirely invisible.

During the second examination the slate A is laid flat upon a table, the written face turned upward and covered with black cardboard. The slate having been sufficiently examined, and been returned to the operator, the latter lays it upon the first, and both are then surrounded by the rubber band.

It is then that the operator holds up the slates with the left hand, of which one sees but the thumb, while upon the posterior face of the second slate the nail of his middle finger makes a sound resembling that produced by chalk when written with. When the operator judges that this little comedy has lasted quite long enough, he lays the two slates horizontally upon his table,[125] taking care this time that the non-prepared slate shall be beneath (Fig. 2). It is upon it that the black cardboard rests; and the other slate, on being raised, shows the characters that it bears, and that are stated to have been written by an invisible spirit that slipped in between the two slates.

“The trick is performed as follows,” says Judge James Bartlett in the Popular Science News: “Each person in the audience is presented with a slip of paper, upon which to write anything he or she may choose. The paper written upon is immediately secreted by the writer, as much care as possible being taken that no one else sees what is written upon it. The performer, who has been absent from the room while this is being done, is brought in and led, as if in a state of trance, to a chair within full view of every one present. A light piece of drapery is thrown over him so that he is completely covered by it, and yet it is thin enough to be translucent, and it can be seen he has not gone down through the floor or ascended up through the ceiling. The audience is told the drapery prevents the sphere or influence or spell that surrounds him from being dissipated. He now begins and repeats, word for word, the sentences written upon any or all the slips of paper. Nothing can be more astonishing; the paper has not left the possession of the writers; it is equally certain that it is impossible that another person could have seen what was thereon written, and yet the trick is as simple as it is surprising, and that is certainly saying a great deal.

“The explanation is as follows: In order to write anything upon the slip of paper given out, one must have something firm and flat upon which to place it, and for this purpose bits of pasteboard of a convenient size are handed about the audience. The pasteboard, however, is not solid, as it seems to be; the uppermost layer of paper can be separated at one of the edges from the layers beneath it, and into this slip white paper introduced. The uppermost layer of paper is blacked with crayon or soft pencil on its under side, and whatever is written upon the paper resting upon it is faithfully stenciled or traced upon the white paper inserted. The pasteboards, being collected, are taken out of the room and given to the performer by his assistant, who may or may not be a confederate. That is, if the performer is very skillful, he may dupe his assistant as well as his audience. He may tell him, for instance, it is necessary for him to have these pasteboard rests and pass his fingers over them so that he can become en rapport with the person with whom they were in contact. It is better, however, at least at first, to have a confederate. The rest is easy enough. The inserted slips of tell-tale papers are collected and carried with him by the performer, who manages to read them either through a hole in the drapery or by the light that sifts through it as he sits covered up in his chair with his back to the audience. It is well, sometimes, not to have enough pasteboard cards to go round the audience, and give apparently at haphazard a book, an atlas or portfolio, which, of course, has been neatly covered with[126] paper or cloth and supplied with blackened and with white paper as are the pasteboard cards.

“If anything should happen that would prevent reading any particular strip of paper, the performer may at once say that he does not pretend to be able to read all, but only such sentences as appear to his mental vision. This will add to the effect and make the trick appear all the more mysterious. In supplying pencils to your audience be sure to give them good, hard ones, that will require some pressure to make the writing legible; be careful, too, that the paper with which you furnish them is rather thin, so that you will get a good tracing on that you have inserted in the pasteboard rest. As each slip is read by the performer the assistant should ask if any one in the audience wrote that sentence and if it is correctly repeated, and then, stepping to the writer and taking the slip from him or her, he should himself read it aloud and show it to any one desirous of seeing it; this enhances the wonder and interest of the performance, and also gives the performer time to decipher the next slip. It is well to have the sentences take the form of questions which the performer can read, comment upon, and answer in an oracular way, especially as this takes up time, and consequently gives fewer selected slips to read during the period allotted to the trick; for to read a few is quite as wonderful as to read many.

“Now let the master of occult art cap the climax. Let him again be led from the room, ostensibly to have his magic sphere renewed, and let some one among the audience write the name of a deceased person, together with their own, on a slip of paper. Lay a good deal of stress on the requirement that one name shall be that of a person deceased; this, of course, being only to mystify the audience. When the names have been written the performer is to enter the room. He does so with the sleeve of his coat rolled up, and his arm bared to the elbow. After showing there is nothing upon his arm, he turns down his sleeve, readjusts his cuff, and proceeds with his trick. He first names the person whom the audience has chosen, in his absence, to write the name; he requests that person to crumple up the slip of paper upon which the name is written and rub it well over his arm just above his cuff, ‘so that the writing will penetrate through his sleeve,’ he says; now turning up his sleeve he shows the writing that was upon the paper in blood-red letters upon his bared arm. The manner of performing this part of the trick is, having ascertained, as before, the writing upon the slip of paper by means of the tracing, to write or print it with red ink mixed with a little glycerine, or red printer’s ink, or oil color and turpentine, upon paper which is to be fastened upon the inside of that part of the performer’s coat sleeve which he instructs the person who has written the name upon the paper to rub with the paper. The paper may be neatly pinned to the lining of the sleeve, care being taken that the pins do not scratch when the sleeve is turned down.”

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The apparatus by means of which objects of various sizes—a card, a bird, a child, a woman, etc.—may be made to apparently disappear play a large part in the exhibitions of magicians, and also in pantomimes and fairy scenes. Among such apparatus there are some that are based upon ingenious mechanical combinations, while others bring in the aid of optics. We shall examine a few of them.

This is an apparatus which an itinerant physicist might have been seen a few years ago exhibiting in the squares and at street corners. His method was to have a spectator draw a card, which he then placed between the four sheets of paper which, folded crossways, formed the flaps of his portfolio. When he opened the latter again a few instants afterward the card had disappeared, or rather had become transformed. Profiting then by the surprise of his spectators, the showman began to offer them his magic portfolio at the price of five cents for the small size and ten for the large.

The portfolio was made of two square pieces of cardboard connected by four strings, these latter being fixed in such a way that when the two pieces of cardboard were open and juxtaposed the external edge of each of them was connected with the inner edge of the other.

This constituted, after a manner, a double hinge that permitted of the portfolio being opened from both sides. To one pair of strings there were glued, back to back, two sheets of paper, which, when folded over, formed the flaps of the portfolio. It was only necessary, then, to open the latter in one direction[128] or the other to render it impossible to open more than one of the two sets of flaps.

This device is one that permits of a large number of tricks being performed, since every object put under one of the sets of flaps will apparently disappear or be converted into something else, at the will of the prestidigitateur.

This trick is a simplification of the foregoing. The affair consists of several sheets of paper of different colors folded over, one upon the other. A card inclosed within the middle envelope, over which have been folded all the others, is found to have disappeared when the flaps are opened again. The secret of the trick is very simple. One of the inner sheets of paper—the second one, usually—is double, and, when folded, forms two envelopes that are back to back. It is only necessary, then, to open one or the other of these latter to cause the appearance or disappearance or transformation of such objects as have been inclosed within it.

Magic boxes are of several styles, according to the size of the objects that one desires to make disappear.

There is no one who has not seen a magician put one or more pigeons into the drawer of one of these boxes, and, after closing it, open it to find that the birds have disappeared. Such boxes contain two drawers, which, when pulled out, seem to be but one; and it is only necessary, then, to pull out the inner one or leave it closed in order to render the inclosed birds visible or invisible.

In order to cause the disappearance of smaller objects, trick performers often employ a jewel box, and after putting the object (a ring, for example) into this, they hand it to some person and ask him to hold it, requesting him at the same time to wrap it up in several sheets of paper. But this simple motion has permitted the performer to cause the ring to drop into his hand through a small trap opening beneath the box. Yet, while he is doing this the spectators think that they hear the noise made by the ring striking against the sides of the box. But that is only an illusion; for the noise that is heard proceeds from a small hammer which is hidden within the cover under the escutcheon, and which is rendered movable when the latter is pressed upon by the performer. The box can thus be shaken without any noise being heard within it, and the spectators are led to believe that the object has disappeared.

Double-bottomed boxes are so well known that it is useless to describe them. Sometimes the double bottom is hidden in the cover, and at others it rests against one of the sides. Such boxes permit of the disappearance or substitution of objects that are not very thick, such as a note, an image, or a card.

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Upon a table, at the rising of the curtain, are observed a bottle and a glass, the latter full of wine up to the brim. The prestidigitateur pours into the bottle half of the liquid, “which otherwise,” he remarks, “might slop over during the voyage.” Then two cylinders of the same diameter as the bottle are made before the eyes of the spectators out of two sheets of paper and four pins.

These are designed to cover the bottle and the glass, which have been separated from each other by a short interval (Fig. 1). Instantaneously, and in an invisible manner, the two objects change places twice, and yet there is never anything in the paper cylinders, which are, ostensibly, torn into a hundred bits.

Fig. 3 unravels the mystery. The bottle is of varnished tin, and bottomless. It covers a second bottle that is similar, but a little smaller, and in the center there is concealed a glass similar to the one that has been shown, but empty. It receives the half of the wine that was poured from the first glass. This operation necessarily contributes toward convincing the spectators that they have before them an ordinary bottle provided with a bottom and capable of containing a liquid.

The operator first covers the bottle with one of the paper cylinders as if to ascertain whether it has the proper diameter, but immediately removes it and places it upright upon the table.

What no one can suspect, however, he has at the same time lifted the first bottle by slightly compressing the paper. It is then the second bottle that is seen, and which is precisely like the other, the labels of both being turned toward the same side and exhibiting a slight tear or a few identical spots designed to aid in the deception.

The operator, having finished his palaver, places the empty cylinder upon the second bottle and covers the glass with the one in which the first bottle is concealed (Fig 2). The magic wand is then brought into play, and after this the paper cylinder alone is lifted at the side where the glass was in the first place seen, while at the opposite side, the bottle, on being removed, exposes the[130] glass that it concealed. The operation is begun over again in the opposite direction; and, finally, under pretense of once again showing that either paper cylinder can be used indifferently, the operator replaces upon the second bottle the cylinder that still contains the first one, unbeknown to the spectators.

This is done so rapidly that the action is apparently a gesture, but nothing more is needed to free the cylinder of its contents and reëstablish things in their former state.

To an apple and a ninepin, the principal objects with which this trick is performed, are added as accessories a napkin, a large vessel of dark blue glass, and a cone of coarse paper, which is made on the spot by molding it over the ninepin.

First Disappearance (Fig. 1).—The apple, “in order that it maybe more in sight,” is placed upon the inverted glass, V, under the paper cone, while the inverted ninepin is covered with the napkin, S, through which it is held. All at once the napkin, quickly seized by the two corners, is vigorously shaken, and the ninepin has disappeared, or, rather, it is found upon the glass in place of the apple, which has passed into the prestidigitateur’s pocket.

Second Disappearance (Fig. 2).—The apple, first placed upon the table, is thrown invisibly toward the paper cone, under which, in fact, it is found.[131] And the ninepin? The prestidigitateur “had forgotten” to tell it where it was to go when he sent the apple in its place. As he gives up trying to find it and seizes the blue vessel in order to put it in place, it is seen that the ninepin, driven by the apple, has passed underneath.

Fig. 3 renders an explanation scarcely necessary. At the moment that the paper cone was made, the ninepin, A, was covered with a dummy, B, of thin metal, which remained in the cone when the latter was removed. In the napkin, formed of two napkins sewed together by their edges, was concealed, between the two fabrics, a small disk of cardboard of the same diameter as the base of the ninepin. The latter was allowed to fall secretly behind the table into a box lined with silk waste, only the cardboard disk being held, thanks to which the napkin preserved the same form that it possessed when the ninepin was beneath it, as shown in Fig. 1. There is no need of explanation in regard to the apple that comes out of the prestidigitateur’s pocket and which is similar to the one that remained on the glass and was hidden by the false ninepin that covered it when the paper cone alone was removed.

For the second disappearance the apple, placed upon the table, is surrounded by the two hands of the prestidigitateur, who, while it is thus concealed, by a blow given with the little finger of the right hand, sends it rolling on to a shelf behind the table. His hands, nevertheless, preserve the same position as if they held the apple. It is the first one that is seen upon the foot of the glass, the false ninepin being removed this time with the paper cover. Under the glass there is a second false ninepin, C, of metal, painted dark blue in the interior and which has a narrow flange through which it rests upon the edge of the glass, of which it seems to form a part. Fig. 3 shows it in section with the glass, and also the different pieces as they are arranged at the beginning of the experiment.

Exhibit a goblet which is apparently nearly full of ink, and place it upon a table. In order to prove that the goblet really contains ink, partially immerse a visiting card in the liquid, and, on taking it out, show that it has been blackened. With an ordinary spoon dip out some of the ink and pour it into a saucer. Then, having borrowed a ring, pretend to dip it into the ink, but really allow it to drop into the saucer. Announce that you are going to make amends for your awkwardness, not by plunging your hand into the liquid, which would have the inconvenience of blackening it, but by rendering the ink colorless instantaneously. Take a white napkin or a large[132] sized silk handkerchief and cover the glass with it. Upon removing the napkin or handkerchief, the glass will be found to contain clear water in which living fish are swimming. The hand may then be dipped into the liquid and the ring be taken out without fear.

The trick is performed as follows: Take a goblet containing water and some fish, and place against the inner surface a piece of black rubber cloth, to which attach a black thread that is allowed to hang down a few inches outside of the glass, and to the extremity of which is attached a small cork. Of course, the thread and cork must be placed at the side of the glass opposite the spectator.

Cover the glass with the napkin, and on removing the latter, grasp the cork, so as to raise it as well as the rubber cloth in the interior.

As for the card, that should have been previously blackened on one side for about three-quarters of its length, and, after being immersed in the liquid, with the white side toward the spectator, should be quickly turned around so as to show the blackened side. As for the liquid taken out with the spoon, care should have been taken to previously fix in the interior of the bowl a few particles of aniline black soluble in water, by breathing on the spoon before introducing the powder, this serving to fix it. Then the water taken out with the spoon will be converted into ink, which may be poured into a plate or saucer.

Being given an ordinary glass half full of wine, which everybody can examine closely, and a hat situated at a distance, the question is to cover the glass with a piece of paper, and thence to send it invisibly into the hat.

A small piece of wood or paper that a spectator has put in the wine, or any mark whatever that has been made upon the glass, will permit of verifying the fact that it is really the same glass that was first exhibited, and that is afterwards found in the hat.

In order to perform this trick, it is necessary to have one of those double glasses (Fig. 4) that can be easily obtained in variety stores, and which contain between their double sides a red liquid that has been introduced through the[133] foot of the glass, which is hollow. A small cork, b, which is absolutely invisible if it is not examined very closely, is inserted and withdrawn at will in order to change the liquid; but, for our trick, there is no occasion to occupy ourselves with these details. This double glass is kept concealed until the moment arrives for using it.

A second glass—this is a simple one (Fig. 4, B) and of the same appearance as the other—is filled with wine, in the presence of the spectators, to a level equal to that reached by the red liquid in the double glass.

The prestidigitateur, after exhibiting the interior of the hat so as to allow it to be seen that the latter is empty, introduces into it, while he turns his back to the spectators, the double glass which he had concealed under his arm, and which can be handled without any fear of spilling the liquid that it contains. The hat is then placed upon the table.

Afterward, taking the simple glass in his hands, the prestidigitateur asks the spectators whether he shall make it pass visibly or invisibly into the hat. As a usual thing suggestions are divided, and so, in order to please everybody, the glass is first put ostensibly into the hat and then immediately taken out; that, at least, is what is thought by the spectators, who are very ready to laugh at the little hoax played upon those who perhaps expected to see the glass carried through the air upon the wings of the wind. But the prestidigitateur has taken care to leave the simple glass in the hat, and to take out, in place of it, the double glass, which he presently spirits away with ease by the following process. The glass having been placed upon the table, he covers it with a square piece of strong paper, which he folds around it in such a way as to make it follow its contours and completely conceal it (Fig. 1). This paper, which must be very stiff, as well as strong, afterward preserves the form upon which, so to speak, it has been molded, although it is no longer supported by the glass, which has been allowed to fall behind the table into a sort of pocket of canvas, or into a box lined with silk waste, arranged to this effect (Fig. 2).

The prestidigitateur, having thus got rid of the glass, walks toward the spectators, delicately pressing the top of the paper between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, as if he still held the glass in the paper, and the foot of which seems to be supported by the right hand. A spectator is then[134] invited to take the glass with the paper, and care is taken to advise him not to allow the wine to run up his sleeves. He then stretches out his hands, but at the same instant the paper, suddenly crumpled into a ball, is thrown into the air, and the glass of wine has passed invisibly into the hat.

After having done considerable talking, as required by his profession, a prestidigitateur is excusable for asking permission of his spectators to refresh himself in their presence, especially if he invites one of them to come to keep him company.

An assistant then brings in upon a tray two claret glasses and two perfectly transparent decanters, one of which contains red wine and the other water. The prestidigitateur asks his guest to select one of the two decanters and leave the other for himself. No hesitation is possible. The guest hastens to seize the wine and each immediately fills his glass. How astonishing! Upon its contact with the glass the wine changes into water and the water becomes wine. Judge of the hilarity of the spectators and the amazement of the victim! The pretended wine was nothing but the following composition: one gram potassium permanganate and two grams sulphuric acid dissolved in one quart of water. This liquid is instantaneously decolorized on entering the glass, at the bottom of which has been placed a few drops of water saturated[135] with sodium hyposulphite. As for the water in the second decanter, that had had considerable alcohol added to it, and at the bottom of the glass that was to receive it had been placed a small pinch of aniline red, which, as well known, possesses strong tinctorial properties. The glasses must be carried away immediately, since in a few moments the wine changed into water loses its limpidity and assumes a milky appearance. The mixtures are, of course, poisonous.

Street venders are often seen selling, at night, a little mouse which they place upon the back of their hand, and which keeps running as if, having been tamed, it wished to take refuge upon them. In order to prevent it from attaining its object, they interpose the other hand, and then the first one, which is now free, and so on. The mouse keeps on running until the vender has found a purchaser for it at the moderate price of two cents, including the instructions for manipulating it, for, as may have been divined, it is not a question here of a live mouse, but of a toy. This little toy is based upon two effects—first, an effect of optics; and second, the effect due to an invisible thread.

The mouse, which is flat beneath, is provided near the head with a small hook, and the operator has fixed to a buttonhole a thread ten inches in length, terminating in a loop. He fixes this loop in the hook above mentioned, and, tautening the thread, places the mouse upon the back of his left hand (near the little finger, for example).

On moving the hand away from the body, the mouse, which does not stir, seems to slide over the back of the hand, and, at the moment that it is about to fall on reaching the thumb, the right hand, passed beneath, arrives just in time to catch it near the little finger, whence, by the same movement as before, it seems to go toward the thumb.

In order to perform the experiment off-hand, it suffices to take a cork and carve it into the form of a mouse, then cut away the under part of the animal thus rough-shaped, so that it may lie perfectly flat, then make two ears out of[136] cardboard, and a tail out of a piece of twine, and finally blacken the whole in the flame of a candle. After this, the black thread, terminating in a ball of soft wax or a pin hook, having been fixed to a button-hole, allow the spectators to examine the mouse, and, after it is returned to you, fix the thread, either by its ball of wax or its hook, to the front of the flat part of the rodent, which you may then cause to run as above described.

The sand frame is a very ingeniously constructed little apparatus which is employed in different tricks of prestidigitation for causing the disappearance of a card, a photograph, a sealed letter, an answer written upon a sheet of paper, etc.

In appearance it is a simple, plush-covered frame, the back of which opens with a hinge behind a glass, which, at first sight, presents nothing peculiar.

In reality, there are two glasses separated from each other by an interval of three millimeters. The lower side of the frame is hollow and forms a reservoir filled with very fine blue sand. In the interior the door is covered with blue paper of the same shade as the sand. The card, portrait, or letter that is subsequently to appear is placed in the frame in advance, but, in order to render it invisible, the latter is held vertically, the reservoir at the top. The sand then falls, and fills the space that separates the two glasses, and the blue surface thus formed behind the first glass seems to be the back of the frame. In order to cause the appearance of the concealed object, the frame is placed vertically, with the reservoir at the bottom, and covered with a silk handkerchief. In a few seconds the sand will have disappeared. The door that closes the back may be opened by a spectator and the frame shown close by, provided that it be held vertically in order to prevent the sand from appearing between the two glasses.

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Fig. 2 shows the frame as seen from behind. The door, P, is seen open, and at S is seen the sand falling between the two glasses. In the section at the side, V and V are the two glasses, P, the door, and R, the reservoir.

Another experiment may be made by means of a small standard on a foot, A, upon which a spectator has placed the seven of hearts. The card passes into the frame. To tell the truth, it is removed by the cover, C, along with the thin disk, D, that covered the foot, A, and upon which it was placed. It will be said that we have here to do with a double bottom. Allow the cover, C, before covering the card, and the foot, A, after the experiment is finished, to be examined. Is the cover asked for again? One will hasten to show it without saying that the back edge of the table has just been struck with it in order to cause the disk, D, and the card to fall on to the shelf.

This ball, which was recently seen in a toy shop, has the aspect, externally, of the one used in the familiar toy known as the “cup and ball.” Extending through its center there is a straight cylindrical aperture, and when a cord is passed through the latter, the ball easily slides along it.

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If a person who is in the secret holds the cord by its two extremities, things change, since the ball, far from falling, descends very slowly along the string, or even remains stationary, and does not move again until the operator allows it to. This trick, which was formerly performed by Robert-Houdin with a ball of large size, very much surprised spectators.

How does the affair work? That is explained in the section of the magic ball shown in the figure. In addition to the central aperture, there is another and curved one, which ends near the extremities of the axial perforation, and a person in the secret, while making believe pass the cord through the straight aperture, actually passes it through the curved one. It will now be apparent that it is only necessary to tighten the cord more or less in order to retard or stop the descent of the ball. To the left of the engraving is seen the magic ball thus suspended between the operator’s hands.

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The tricks performed by jugglers afford a most wonderful example of the perfection that our senses and organs are capable of attaining under the influence of exercise.

The juggler is obliged to give impetuses that vary infinitesimally. He must know the exact spot whither his ball will go, calculate the parabola that it will describe, and know the exact time that it will take to describe it. His eye must take in the position of three, four, or five balls that are sometimes several yards apart, and he must solve these different problems in optics, mechanics, and mathematics instantaneously, ten, fifteen, twenty times per minute, and that, too, in the least convenient position—upon the back of a running horse, upon a tight-rope, upon a ball, or upon a barrel that he causes to revolve. His dexterity is wonderful. Many jugglers are content to perform their feats of skill with their hands, and, in addition, do balancing worthy of remark.

We can obtain experimentally some idea of the dexterity shown by a juggler by trying for ourselves the simplest of his tricks. Whoever is capable of throwing two balls into the air at once, and catching them in succession while standing steadily in the same spot, and without being[140] obliged to step to the right or left, or undergoing contortions, is endowed with an undoubted aptitude for juggling. On the other hand, whoever can stand upright upon a rickety chair without any feeling of fear, or cross a country brook, not upon a tight-rope or wire (which would be too much to ask for a début), but upon a plank of two hands’ width, and do this without a quick palpitation of the heart, has an aptitude for tight-rope walking.

To perform with a couple of balls, however, is quite simple, and many children succeed in it after a few days’ practice. They proceed as follows: Having a ball in each hand, they throw the one in the right vertically into the air, pass into the right the one that is in the left and throw this up too, receive the first ball in the left hand, and pass it into the right, throw it up again, and so on; so that the two balls are almost constantly in the air, save during the time it takes to receive the ball with one hand and pass it into the other. If, instead of using both hands, the child employs but one, receiving and throwing one ball while the other is in the air, the difficulty is greater, and the young man who can perform this operation twenty times without dropping one of the balls can treat the artist of the circus as a confrère. To perform with three balls it is necessary to have been taught by a professor. Moreover, it should be remarked that the art of juggling has sufficient advantages as regards the development of the touch, the quick calculation of distances, the nimbleness of the fingers, and the accuracy of the eye and of motion, to cause it to be added to those gymnastic exercises which children are taught at school. It is to this art that the celebrated prestidigitateur Robert-Houdin attributed the dexterity and accuracy that he displayed in his tricks. In his memoirs, he relates that, while taking some lessons from an old juggler, he applied himself so closely to the exercises that at the end of a month he could learn nothing further from his instructor. “I succeeded,” says he, “in performing with four balls, but that did not satisfy my ambition. I wished, if it were possible, to surpass that faculty of reading by appreciation, which I had so much admired in[141] pianists; so I placed a book in front of me, and, while the four balls were flying in the air, accustomed myself to read without hesitation. It could not be believed how much delicacy and certainty of execution this exercise communicated to my fingers, and what quickness of perception it gave my eye. After in this way rendering my hands supple and obedient, I no longer hesitated to directly practice prestidigitation.”

In order to keep their hand in, professional jugglers have to exercise daily, since a few days of voluntary or forced rest would necessitate double work in order to give the hands their former suppleness and dexterity. As is well known, the same is the case with the agility of the danseuse, with whom one day of rest often means more than eight days of double work.

Some jugglers perform with objects of the most diverse nature, throwing up, for example, at the same time, a large ball, an orange, and a piece of paper, and giving these articles of different size and weight such an impulsion that each falls and is thrown again at the moment desired. Some jugglers, as a support, use merely a simple wooden bar held vertically, and upon the top of which they perform their various feats of dexterity or contortion. It is the same apparatus formerly used by Greek acrobats, and, by reason of its form, called πεταυρον (perch for fowls). Some acrobats even balance themselves on the head at the top of this perch, with their legs extended in lieu of a balancing pole. Their arms are free, and they eat, drink, smoke, shoot off a pistol, perform with balls and daggers, and, in a word, perform the most diverse feats (Fig. 2).

Some jugglers are capable of performing extremely curious feats of dexterity with the most diverse objects; for example, with rings that they throw into the air, with hats that they revolve by striking the rim, or with a flag or napkin that they revolve. These hats and napkins no longer seem to obey the laws of gravity. Others, by means of a streamer, form helices and graceful curves; and others, again, by means of a simple bit of paper, succeed in reproducing the Japanese butterfly trick. Japanese maidens are noted for performing this with extraordinary grace and skill.

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The application of mechanics to scenic and gymnastic displays has an interesting exponent in the revolving trapeze, an exhibition which, after attracting much attention in England, has come back to the United States.

In the smaller cut we illustrate the mechanism of the apparatus, while the performance executed upon the apparatus is shown in the larger cut. From the ceiling of the great auditorium is suspended a vertical three sided rectangular frame open at the bottom. In its lower extremity is journaled at the center a four-sided rectangular frame, from whose extremities two trapezes hang. To the upper side of the vertical frame is secured a bicycle, which, by gearing shown in the small cut, connects with the axle of the lower frame, so that when the cranks of the bicycle are worked the lower frame is turned round and round. It can be brought into accurate balance by means of shot. The whole apparatus, including the bicycle, is studded with incandescent electric lamps, and the performer who rides the bicycle wears a helmet carrying electric lights. The very striking performance is explained in great measure by the cut.

One of the performers sits on the bicycle and, turning the cranks, as if riding, keeps the lower frame in rotation, while two performers go through different evolutions on the trapezes thus carried around through the air. A switch board is placed at the head of the bicycle, and by manipulating switches the vari-colored electric lights are turned on and off so as to produce any desired effect. Independent of the high merit of the performance simply as gymnastics, the mechanical points are of value; for ease and safety of manipulation and security from any failure is an absolute essential. No one has anything to do with its operation except the three performers, so that it is constantly under their control. Where any attempt is made to operate such mechanism from behind the scenes, there is always a great liability of trouble or partial failure; but here the performer on the bicycle does all the work of actuating the mechanical portion and has every part under constant supervision and control, while the illuminated bicycle, located as it is at great height from the floor, is an added attraction. The length of the trapeze ropes, it will be observed, is so adjusted as to allow the performer to pass through the frame without touching it, and the absence of a center bar in the frame is necessary to the same end.

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A performance of considerable scientific interest has been produced in this and other cities which is presented in the accompanying illustration.[1] In order to procure a perfectly smooth surface to walk on, a board twenty-four and one-half feet long is suspended from the ceiling, and near one end of this is a trapeze. The lower surface of the board is painted, and is smooth and polished. The performer, who is known as Aimée, the human fly, is equipped with pneumatic attachments to the soles of her shoes. Sitting in the trapeze with her face to the audience, she draws herself upward by the arms, and raises her feet until they press against the board. They adhere by atmospheric pressure. She leaves the trapeze, and hangs head downward, as shown. Taking very short steps, not over eight inches in length, she gradually walks the length of the board backward. She then slowly turns round, taking very short steps while turning, and eventually returns, still walking backward. This closes the performance.

To provide against accident a net is stretched under the board. The performer has frequently fallen, but so far no serious accident has happened. There is a certain art in managing the fall, as, if the shock were received directly by the spinal column, it might be very severe.

The attachment to the shoe is, in general terms, an india-rubber sucker with cup-shaped adhering surface. It is a disk four and one-half inches in diameter and five-eighths of an inch thick. To its center a stud is attached, which is perforated near the end. This stud enters a socket fastened to the sole of the shoe. The socket is also perforated transversely. A pin is passed through the apertures, securing the hold between socket and disk. The socket is under the instep and is attached to the shank of the shoe sole.

A wire loop that extends forward under the toe of the shoe is pivoted on two studs which are secured on each end of the transverse central diameter of the disk. This loop is normally held away from the disk and pressing against the shoe sole by a spring. One end of the loop projects back toward and over the rear edge of the disk. A short piece of string is secured to the india rubber and passes through a hole in the extension, or rearwardly projecting arm, of the loop. The disk when pressed against a smooth surface is held fast by the pressure of the atmosphere. If now the loop is pressed toward the surface to which it adheres, the string will be drawn tight and will pull the edge of the india rubber away from the board. Air will rush in, and the adhesion will cease. As each new step is taken, one disk is made to adhere by pressure, and the other is detached by the action just described.

The power of the disk to sustain the weight of a performer may be easily calculated.

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Each sucker is 4¹⁄₂ inches in diameter, and contains therefore 16 square inches of surface. The full atmospheric pressure for the area would amount to 240 pounds. The stud and socket attachment provides a central bearing, so that the full advantage of this and the disk is obtained, and a fairly perfect vacuum procured. As the performer only weighs about 125 pounds, there is about 115 pounds to spare with a perfect vacuum.

At the circus of the Champs Elysées, at Paris, a performance was given a few years ago that would really put the sagacity of the spectators to the test, did not the performer explain it after his exhibition.

A ball, thirty inches in diameter, is brought into the ring and placed on top of a sloping bridge formed of two planks with an intervening platform (Fig. 1). All at once the ball begins to rock a little, and then moves to the edge of the platform, whence one might expect to see it roll immediately to the base of the inclined plane; but it does nothing of the sort. It stops at the edge and begins to descend with precaution. It seems to hesitate, passes over but a small space, then ascends a little, stops again, and then starts off again in fine style. When it has reached the base of the inclined plane, the lower extremity of which is about twenty inches from the ground, it stops, and then rapidly ascends to the top again. Here the mystery begins to be explained. All at once a flag is seen to make its exit through a small aperture, then a shot is fired from the interior; the ball is certainly inhabited. This we soon have proof of, for, after rolling rapidly to the base of the second inclined plane, it falls upon a cushion placed upon the ground, where a man steps forth from it. It is the clown Lepère. It is very surprising to see a man of such a stature (five feet) make his exit from so small a ball.

Although we have seen “india-rubber men” who could place themselves in so confined a space, we cannot compare their performance to that of M. Lepère, who not only places himself within his ball, but moves therein with a skill that is truly wonderful. It is necessary, in fact, to have a remarkable sense of equilibrium and remarkable suppleness to be able, in such a position, to continually displace the center of gravity of the ball and keep it always in the vertical plane passing through the axis of the bridge. Our second engraving shows how M. Lepère places himself. After the ball is closed, an equilibrium exists only when he is seated.

When he wishes to make his ball move forward, he must bend over and walk upon his hands and knees, after the manner of a squirrel in his wheel. But how many precautions have to be taken to make the axis of the body coincide with that of the bridge, so that the ball shall not fall from the inclined plane, which is but twelve inches wide! And what agility does it not require to react immediately against the velocity acquired after the ball, in consequence[147]
[148] of a displacement, has begun to roll! Center of gravity, velocity, and inertia are principles of mechanics that exhibitions of strength and dexterity often put under contribution. Although clowns do not bother themselves much with learning the principles of mechanics upon which their performances are based, they apply them with wonderful dexterity and have a sort of instinct, a special aptitude, which permits them quickly to find the position of equilibrium. The performance that M. Lepère presents in so ingenious and new a fashion is an evident proof of this.

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Burning is undoubtedly that kind of pain against which the human being most strongly revolts, and the fear of being burned is not confined to man alone, but exists also as an instinct in the entire animal kingdom. This fear, the horror of being burned, which is so powerful in men, accounts for the fact that in all times the wonder and curiosity of the public have been excited by those who are capable of handling burning coals or red-hot iron with impunity, or of touching molten metal, and by those who are proof against flames or burning water or oil. There are many examples in history of individuals who are more or less fireproof, and the trials by fire in ancient and mediæval times do not need to be cited here. It was not until about 1677 that the question of the proof of man against fire was looked at from a scientific standpoint. This was done by the physician Dodart, a member of the Academy of Sciences. These studies were provoked by the wonderful tricks which were being performed at that time in Paris by an English chemist named Richardson. Dodart explained that these experiments could be performed without the aid of any chemical preparation, by taking a few precautions, and also that the success of them depended upon the hardening that the epidermis may acquire under the influence of an oft-repeated action.

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This hardening of the skin among laborers results in their frequently being able to handle red-hot iron and lighted coals with impunity. This, however, does not suffice to explain the tricks of those individuals who exhibit in public as fireproof. The experiments of the Italian physician and chemist, Sementini, have shown that there are preparations which, when put upon the skin, render the latter absolutely insensible to contact with fire or incandescent materials. His first experiments had no result; finally, after submitting himself to repeated friction with sulphurous acid, he was enabled to apply a red-hot iron to his skin with impunity. Continuing his experiments, he found that a solution of alum had the same property. One day, having accidentally rubbed soap upon the surface of a hand that had previously been impregnated with alum, he found that the hand was still further proof against fire. He then discovered that a layer of powdered sugar covered with soap sufficed to render his tongue entirely insensible to heat. After all these experiments Sementini succeeded in making himself much better proof against fire than was the charlatan who first suggested the experiment to him.

Fire eaters have always been very popular on the vaudeville stage, and we present an engraving showing two fire eaters at the Olympia Theater, Paris.[151] When the performers appear upon the stage, they are clad in a tight-fitting costume of a red color which represents that of the devils of fairy scenes. The stage upon which they appear is but dimly lighted during their presence upon it. The devils, after making their bow, go to the rear of the stage, and put some preparations upon their hands; they come to the front of the stage and cause very thin but brilliant flames to dart from their fingers; bringing these flames near to their mouths, they seem to swallow them and then extinguish them between their teeth. When the two devils touch each other’s hands a crackling sound is heard, and long flames dart forth for a few seconds from the tips of their fingers, which they continuously move. They subsequently experiment without putting anything in their mouths; they blow with energy, and a brilliant flame makes its exit from between their lips. They shoot forth a bed of flame for a considerable length of time, which certainly exceeds half a minute. The combustion is due to a very volatile essence.

Certain eaters of burning tow proceed as follows: They form a little ball of material which they tightly compress and then light, and allow to burn up almost entirely. Then rolling this in new tow in order to guard the mucous membrane in the mouth against contact with the incandescent ball, they breathe gently, taking care while doing so to inhale only through the nose, and thus project smoke and sparks.

Another trick of the fire eaters is when they pretend to drink burning oil. A little kerosene oil is poured into an iron ladle. The oil is now lighted, and while the ladle is held in the left hand, an iron spoon is dipped into the oil as though to take a spoonful; but in reality the spoon is only wet, and when it is brought blazing to the mouth the operator throws back his head as though to swallow it, and at the same time a slight puff is given by the breath, which blows it out. This trick is very effective if well done, but the reader is especially cautioned against trying any experiments in tricks of this kind, as the results are apt to be dangerous except in the hands of experts. This will be seen by what is called the sponge trick. Two or three small sponges are[152] placed in an iron ladle, gasolene is poured over them, only a sufficient quantity being used to wet them; they must in no case drip. The sponges are now set on fire, and the experimenter takes up one of them with his tongs, and, throwing his head back, drops the blazing sponge into his mouth. He expels his breath quickly all the time. Suddenly he closes his mouth; this cuts off the oxygen necessary for combustion, and the flame immediately goes out. Performers who present fire tricks for the amusement of a company frequently try experiments which give a ghastly appearance to the audience. This is done by pouring a few ounces of alcohol into a basin containing a handful of salt. When this is lighted the complexion of everyone is hideous. A slightly different effect is used by infusing saffron in alcohol for a number of hours, and then adding salt as before; it is usually poured upon tow which is lighted. There are some liquids that have the property of taking fire and burning without injuring the object upon which they are poured and without producing any painful sensation upon the skin. As a usual thing such liquids are very volatile and consist of essential oils, ether, etc. The reason that some substances can be burned without injuring them, or upon the skin without burning, are explained as follows: These substances are very volatile, and their tension is considerable, and, in reality, when they are burning, it is merely their vapor which is on fire. This vapor then tends to borrow heat from the liquid, whence the latter may remain at a relatively low temperature while the surface is on fire. This is a reasonable explanation of the curious phenomenon of the burning liquid.

The sword employed is a simple, thin, flexible blade of steel, not at all sharp, and the plan of which is seen at A in the accompanying cut. The point is sufficiently blunt to prevent it from doing any harm.

As for the prestidigitateur, whose body the sword will simply pass around, but not pierce, he carries concealed beneath his vest a sort of sheath that consists of a tube of rectangular section, and semicircular in shape, and the two extremities of which are bent in contrary directions in such a way that they are situated in the same straight line, the two orifices opening in front and behind at right angles with the abdomen. This apparatus, B, is held in place by cords attached to two small rings at the two extremities of the tube.

It is the prestidigitateur himself who, appearing instinctively to grasp the point of the sword as if to protect himself, directs it into the metallic tube. It makes its exit between the tails of the coat. It might be made to come out at the center of the back, but in this case it would be necessary to have an aperture formed in the seam of the coat. The illusion produced is complete, seeing that the flexible blade straightens out on making its exit from the tube, on account of the form of the latter’s extremity. It is necessary to[153] operate rapidly, so that the spectators shall not have time to see that the length of the sword has diminished at this moment, the curved line that it follows not being the shortest passage from one point to another.

The figure represents a variant of the trick in which the sword is provided with an eye through which a long red ribbon is passed, and which follows the blade when the latter is pulled out at the opposite side of the body.

Japanese jugglers, as well known, are possessed of very extraordinary skill. A few years ago two of them performed the following feat, which required a wonderful dexterity. One of them stood, with arms extended, in front of a thick board placed vertically; and the other, armed with a number of wide-bladed knives, stationed himself at a distance of about six yards from the board, and from thence threw the knives with a sure hand and stuck one of them in the board just above the head of the target, two of them very close to the right and left of the neck, and others around the arms; in a word, he outlined the form of his companion with the knives stuck very deeply into the board. This performance met with extraordinary success, and an effort was at once made to reproduce it; but as such dexterity is not possessed by everybody, and as, in addition, the operation is dangerous, the following substitute was devised by M. Voisin for the use of prestidigitateurs.

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The board that is employed in this case, instead of being, as in the genuine performance, a simple one, is a piece of cabinet work containing an ingenious mechanism. The place which the human target will occupy on this board is carefully marked, and the knives that are to be stuck into the board in succession around such place are contained in the cabinet work, which, at first sight and at a short distance, seems to be absolutely without preparation.

Each of these knives is fixed by its point upon a pivot. In addition, it is controlled by a spring, and is concealed within the board by a very finely adjusted double-valved window, which, at the proper moment, opens and allows it to appear, and then closes. The spring causes the knife to fall or rise according to the place that the latter is to occupy. No. 2 of the engraving shows the window opening to allow of the fall of the knife, which will appear as if stuck into the board just above the instep. In each of the valves the angles that meet each other are cut slopingly either at the top or bottom, according as the knife is to fall or rise, in order to make space for the blade when the valves are closed. Before the exit of the knife, the incision is closed with modeling wax the color of the wood. In our engraving the incision is at the bottom.

Naturally the knives are concealed in the board in such a way that on making their exit the field shall be free, and that they shall not come into contact with the limbs of the target. Each of these knives, with its window, forms a distinct apparatus, which is controlled by a rod that ends at the edge of the board just at the place where the fingers of the human target can reach them. It is he who, by pressing upon the ends of the rods as if upon the keys of a piano, causes the blades to come out of their place of concealment, one after another, and appear as if they had just stuck into the board. The sound made by the spring in expanding and the sudden appearance of the knife, combined with the motion of the person throwing it, affords a complete illusion. Let us add that each knife mounted on a pivot at its point, as we have explained, may be easily disengaged from its axis when, after the operation, the person who threw the knives makes believe to pull them out by force from the wood in which they seem to be inserted.

The board having been invented, it became necessary to find a method of throwing the knives in such a way as to cause them to disappear. To this effect the board is placed on one side of the stage, near the side scenes, and the person who throws the knives stations himself on the other side of the stage, near the opposite side scenes, and he can therefore act in two ways, viz., first, in poising his arms to take aim, he can, at the last moment, throw the knife between the side scenes back of him while he takes a step forward. The knife supposed to be thrown thus disappears completely at the desired moment, but, since the spectators do not see the flash of the blade, traversing the stage, it is preferable to employ the second method. This consists in a genuine throwing of the knife, but in such a way as to cause it to pass by the board and fall between the side scenes, where the sound of its fall is deadened by some such material as a piece of carpet. In both of these two methods, it is[156] for the human target to press the spring of the knife that he wishes to make appear at just the precise moment, in order that the click of the expanding spring may be taken by the spectators for the sound of the knife sticking into the wood.

This trick, when well executed, has often deceived the shrewdest spectators, and that, too, with so much the more facility in that many had seen the Japanese perform in the middle of a circus, where it was impossible to conceal the knife, since it could be followed by the eye in its travel from the hand of the Japanese to the point where it penetrated the board.

To be precise, and to omit no information, let us say in conclusion, that there exist boards in which the freeing of the knives is effected by the pulling of a thread held in the side scenes by a third party. This process has the advantage that there is no danger of the spectators seeing the manipulation of the rods; but, on the other hand, it has its inconveniences, viz., in a place where a communication cannot be established between the invisible confederate and the mechanical board, the use of it is impossible, and it is necessary to employ the other method.

When a physician introduces his finger, the handle of a spoon, or a pencil into the throat of a patient, the latter experiences an extremely disagreeable sensation. Any touching of the pharynx, however slight it be, causes strangling, pain, and nausea, and the organ reacts with violence against the obstacle that presents itself to free respiration. There is no one who has not more than once experienced this disagreeable impression, and for this reason we are justly surprised when we meet with people who seem to be proof against it, and who, for example, introduce into their pharynx large, solid, and stiff objects like sword blades, and cause these to penetrate to a depth that appears incredible. It is experiments of this kind that constitute the tricks of sword swallowers.

These experiments are nearly always the same. The individual comes out dressed in a brilliant costume. At one side of him there are flags of different nationalities surrounding a panoply of sabers, swords, and yatagans, and at the other, a stack of guns provided with bayonets. Taking a flat saber, whose blade and hilt have been cut out of the same sheet of metal, the blade being from fifty-five to sixty centimeters in length, he introduces its extremity into his throat, taps the hilt gently, and the blade at length entirely disappears. He then repeats the experiment in swallowing the blade at a single gulp. Subsequently, after swallowing and disgorging two of these same swords, he causes one to penetrate up to its guard, a second not quite so far, a third a little less still, and a fourth up to about half its length, the hilts being then arranged as shown in our third illustration (C).

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Pressing now on the hilts, he swallows the four blades at a gulp, and then he takes them out leisurely one by one. The effect is quite surprising. After swallowing several different swords and sabers, he takes an old musket armed with a triangular bayonet, and swallows the latter, the gun remaining vertical over his head. Finally he borrows a large saber from a dragoon who is present for the purpose, and causes two-thirds of it to disappear. As a trick, on being encored, the sword swallower borrows a cane from a person in the audience, and swallows it almost entirely.

A certain number of spectators usually think that the performer produces an illusion through the aid of some trick, and that it is impossible to swallow a sword blade. But this is a mistake, for sword swallowers who employ artifices are few in number and their experiments but slightly varied, while the majority really do introduce into their mouths and food passages the blades that they cause to disappear. They attain this result as follows:

The back parts of the mouth, despite their sensitiveness and their rebellion against contact with solid bodies, are capable of becoming so changed through habit that they gradually get used to abnormal contacts. This fact is taken advantage of in medicine. It daily happens that persons afflicted with disorders of the throat or stomach can no longer swallow or take nourishment, and would die of exhaustion were they not fed artificially by means of the œsophageal tube. This latter is a vulcanized rubber tube which the patient swallows, after the manner of sword swallowers, and through the extremity of which milk or bouillon is introduced. But the patient, before being able to make daily use of this apparatus, must serve a genuine apprenticeship. The first introduction of the end of the tube into the pharynx is extremely painful, the second is a little less so, and it is only after a large number of trials, more or less prolonged, that the patient succeeds in swallowing ten or twelve inches of the tubing without a disagreeable sensation.

The washing out of the stomach, performed by means of a long, flexible[159] tube which the patient partially swallows, and with which he injects into and removes from his stomach a quantity of tepid water by raising the tube or letting it hang down to form a siphon, likewise necessitates an apprenticeship of some days; but the patient succeeds in accustoming his organs to contact with the tube, and is finally able, after a short time, to swallow the latter with indifference, at least.

With these sword swallowers it is absolutely the same; for with them it is only as a consequence of repeated trials that the pharynx becomes sufficiently accustomed to it to permit them to finally swallow objects as large and rigid as swords, sabers, canes, and even billiard cues.

Swallowers of forks and spoons serve an analogous apprenticeship. As known, the talent of these consists in their ability to introduce into the throat a long spoon or fork while holding it suspended by its extremity between two fingers. This trick is extremely dangerous, since the œsophagus exerts a sort of suction on all bodies that are introduced into it. The spoon or fork is, then, strongly attracted, and if the individual cannot hold it, it will drop into his stomach, whence it can only be extracted by a very dangerous surgical operation—gastrotomy. It was accidents of this kind that made the “forkman” and the “knifeman” celebrated, and, more recently, the “spoonman” who died from the effects of the extraction from his stomach of a sirup spoon.

All sword swallowers do not proceed in the same way. Some swallow the blade directly, without any intermediate apparatus; but in this case, their sabers are provided at the extremity, near the point, with a small bayonet-shaped appendage over which they slip a gutta-percha tip without the spectators perceiving it (F and G). Others do not even take such a precaution, but swallow the saber or sword just as it is.

This is the mode of procedure of an old zouave, especially, who has become a poor juggler, and who, in his experiments, allows the spectators to touch, below his sternum, the projection that the point of the saber in his stomach makes on his skin.

But the majority of sword swallowers who exhibit upon the stage employ a guiding tube which they have previously swallowed, so that the experiments they are enabled to perform become less dangerous and can be varied more. This tube, which is from forty-five to fifty centimeters long, is made of very thin metal. Its width is twenty-five millimeters, and its thickness fifteen (B). These dimensions permit of the easy introduction of flat-bladed sabers, among other things, and of the performance of the four-sabers experiment, and of the introduction of sabers and swords of all kinds.

To explain the latter from a physiological standpoint, the saber swallowed by the performer enters the mouth and pharynx first, then the œsophagus, traverses the cardiac opening of the stomach, and enters the latter as far as the antrum of the pylorus—the small cul-de-sac of the stomach. In their normal state these organs are not in a straight line, but are placed so by the passage of the sword. In the first place, the head is thrown back so that the mouth is in the direction of the œsophagus, the curves of which disappear or[160] become less; the angle that the œsophagus makes with the stomach becomes null; and, finally, the last-named organ distends in a vertical direction and its internal curve disappears, thus permitting the blade to traverse the stomach through its greater diameter; that is to say, to reach the small cul-de-sac. It should be understood that before such a result can be attained the stomach must have been emptied through fasting on the part of the operator.

The depth of fifty-five to sixty centimeters to which these men cause their instruments to penetrate, and which seems extraordinary to spectators, is explained by the dimensions of the organs traversed. Such lengths may be divided thus:

Mouth and pharynx, 10 to 12; œsophagus, 25 to 28; distended stomach, 20 to 22—55 to 62 centimeters.

According to the stature of the individual, a length of organs of from 55 to 62 centimeters may give passage to swallowed swords without inconvenience.

Sword swallowing exhibitors have rendered important services to medicine. It was due to one of them—a swallower of both swords and pebbles—that, in 1777, a Scotch physician, Stevens, was enabled to make the first studies upon the gastric juice of human beings. In order to do this, he caused this individual to swallow small metallic tubes pierced with holes and filled with meat according to Reaumur’s method, and got him to disgorge them again after a certain length of time. It was also sword swallowers who showed physicians to what extent the pharynx could become habituated to contact; and from this resulted the invention of the Foucher tube, the œsophageal tube, the washing out of the stomach, and the illumination of the latter organ by the electric light.

It sometimes happens that sword swallowers who exhibit in public squares and at street corners are, at the same time, swallowers of pebbles, like him whose talents were utilized by Stevens; that is to say, they have the faculty of swallowing pebbles of various sizes, sometimes even stones larger than a hen’s egg, and that, too, to the number of four, five, or six, sometimes more, and of[161] afterward disgorging them one by one through a simple contraction of the stomach. Here we have a new example of the modification of sensitiveness and function that an individual may secure in his organs by determination and constant practice.

In conclusion, let us say a word in regard to the tricks that produce the illusion of swallowed swords or sabers. One of these, which deceives only at a certain distance, consists in plunging the saber into a tube that descends along the neck and chest, under the garments, and the opening of which, placed near the mouth, is hidden by means of a false beard. Another and much more ingenious one, which has been employed in several enchantment scenes, is that of the sword whose blade enters its hilt, and which is due to M. Voisin, the skillful manufacturer of physical apparatus. In its ordinary state this sword has a stiff blade, eighty centimeters in length, which, when looked at from a distance of a few meters, presents no peculiarity (see D in our engraving); but when the exhibitor plunges it into his mouth, the spectator sees it descend by degrees, and finally so nearly disappear that but a few centimeters of the blade protrude. In reality, the blade has entered into the hilt, for it possesses a solid tip that enters the middle part, which is hollow, and these two parts enter into the one that forms the base of the sword. The blade is thus reduced to about twenty-five centimeters, a half of which length enters the hilt. There then remain but a few centimeters outside the exhibitor’s mouth, so that he seems to have swallowed the sword (see G and E). This is a very neat trick.

Of all the daring tricks that have been introduced in the circus, none have caused more comment than the one in which a person, generally a lady, walks with bare feet up a ladder of sharp swords, treading directly on the sharp edges without any injury to the feet.

It is amusing to a person who is acquainted with the secret to hear the many explanations of “how it is done” offered by the spectators, yet none of them ever come near guessing the truth. This secret has been so jealously and successfully guarded that very few, even among the best informed experts, know how it is performed.

From the illustration it will be seen how the swords are arranged in a rack with the cutting edges on top. The rack is usually about seven feet high, and eight swords are used. One of the most necessary points in the preparation for the trick is that the rack should stand firm, and the swords fit snug and tight in the slots made to receive them.

Usually the inspectors are invited to examine the rack as well as the swords, and paper is cut with the swords to show that they are really sharp. The secret is not in the swords or rack, but in the preparation of the performer’s feet. In a pint of water as much alum is dissolved as the water will readily take up. To the alum water is added as much zinc sulphate, thoroughly dissolved, as will lie on a silver dime.

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A few minutes before doing the act the performer bathes the feet in this solution and allows them to dry without wiping. Just before leaving the dressing-room the feet are dipped for a moment in as cold water as can be secured, and at once wiped dry without rubbing.

By placing the feet squarely on the swords there is no danger, but great care must be used not to allow the foot to slide or slip on the sword, or the result would be a very bad accident.

On leaving the circus in which one has seen the above act, visitors are almost sure to see before the ever-present side show a large painting on which is the representation of a Mexican dancing with bare feet in a shallow box filled with broken glass.

If you are of an inquisitive nature, and have seen a lady walk with bare feet up a ladder of sharp swords, you enter the side show to see this new wonder.

On a raised platform is found a box about four feet long, three feet wide, and six inches deep, the bottom of which is covered with broken glass. In a few moments a man dressed in the Mexican costume appears on the platform and proceeds to break a few old bottles and throw the broken glass in the box, then removes his shoes, shows his feet to be free from any covering, steps in the box,[163] and dances among the glass. After he has finished dancing he shows his feet to be uninjured, and retires. The trick is performed in the following manner:

Secure a number of thick glass bottles, break them in rather small pieces and file or grind all the sharp edges round. This stock of glass you place in the center of a box made according to above measurement. Now soak your feet in strong alum water and wipe dry, and give them a thorough rubbing with pulverized rosin. Dust the inside of your shoes with rosin, put them on, and go upon the platform. Take some old lamp chimneys and bottles, break them in bits, and throw this fresh broken glass in the box, around the edges and in the corners, not in the center. Remove your shoes, step in the center of the box, among the prepared glass, and do your dancing. Avoid the sides or corners of the box, where you have thrown the glass, and you run no risk of cutting your feet, especially if you use plenty of rosin. The amateur hardly needs to be informed that such tricks should be left entirely to professionals.

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Ventriloquists may, according to their specialties, be divided into various categories. Some devote their talent to the imitation of the cries of animals, the songs of birds, the noise of tools, etc.; others imitate the sound of musical instruments; some mock the noise produced by a crowd, a regiment, or a procession; while others, again, make dolls or dummies speak.

Certain ventriloquists imitate the sound of musical instruments, from that of the violin up to that of brass instruments with the most piercing notes. Others excel in imitating the noise of the plane, saw, etc.

Certain ventriloquists, while hidden by a screen simply, have the faculty of making their audience believe that several persons, or even a crowd, are in the vicinity.

At Egyptian Hall, London, a magician recently made his appearance upon the stage, carrying a doll, with which he held a somewhat uncouth conversation. The lips of the doll were observed to move, and the illusion was complete, when all at once the doll’s head was strangely transformed. The magician had just opened his hand, showing that it was the latter alone that—inclosed in a white glove upon which were a few colored marks—formed the doll’s head.

In our engraving may be seen two methods of arranging the fingers for forming a doll’s head with the hand. The illusion is produced by making a few simple lines with charcoal, and wrapping a handkerchief or napkin around the hand; then, if one has a little aptness for ventriloquism, he may hold a conversation with the head.

In our time, most ventriloquists who exhibit in public considerably facilitate the illusion that they desire to produce by using large articulated dummies, which they make speak and sing, and talk to one another—each in a different voice. These figures are so constructed that the ventriloquist’s hands can move their arms and legs, turn their heads to the right or left, give their shoulders a shrug, open or close their eyes, and move their lower jaws in such a way that their mouths seem to utter the words that the spectator hears.

We may say, in a general way, that these ventriloquists, thanks to the use of their dummies, succeed in producing so complete an illusion that people are frequently persuaded that the voice heard actually comes from the mouth[165] of the figure, and that it does not proceed from the ventriloquist standing near the latter, but from a confederate hidden somewhere about, whose voice is heard through the intermedium of a speaking-tube.

There is one trick that always tends to confirm the spectator’s illusion, and that is this: in the little prefatory speech that the ventriloquist makes, he gives out that he is a foreigner, and does not speak the language of his audience well; in fact, he expresses himself with difficulty and with a strong accent. His dummies, on the contrary, answer in very good French or English, as the case may be; and when the auditors hear them, they are led to believe that ventriloquism counts for nothing in their answers or conversation.

Explanation of Ventriloquism.—The art of ventriloquism is primarily based upon an acoustic phenomenon—the difficulty that the ear experiences in determining the exact point whence comes the sound that it hears. That there is such an incertitude as to the direction of sounds is easily verified, and the following are a few cases in proof of it. Mr. Stuart Cumberland, a mind[166] reader, who exhibited at Paris a few years ago, performed a little experiment in the drawing-room, after his “second-sight” séances, which usually resulted in surprising and amusing his auditors. In this experiment, a willingly disposed person, being seated in the middle of the room, allowed his eyes to be bandaged. Then Mr. Cumberland took a five-franc piece and made it jingle by striking it with a hard object, say a key or another coin. The person submitted to the experiment then had to tell the direction from whence the sound emanated, and to give the distance at which it seemed to him to have been made. In almost all cases the individual guessed a direction and distance very different from the real one, and the error, which was ofttimes great, naturally provoked great hilarity from the spectators. Moreover, Mr. Cumberland, by varying the position of his hand in such a way that the latter formed a screen between the coin and the ear of the blindfolded person, caused the latter’s perception as to the direction of the sound to vary, although, as a matter of fact, the experimenter had not budged from his first position.

At a soirée, we have seen a member of the Institute, who had cheerfully submitted himself to the experiment, extremely surprised, when his bandage was removed, at the gross errors in auditory perception that he had just committed. The illusion that it is thus possible to produce by varying the positions of the hand in which a coin is jingled is, in the main, analogous to that obtained through ventriloquism. Another example: If several persons be standing in the same line, at a few feet from a spectator, and one of them emits a prolonged sound—a vowel, for example, say a a a—that requires no motion of the lips, the spectator will be unable to determine from which of the persons the sound proceeds; or if, moreover, he tries to point the one out, he will be almost certain to commit an error, the person designated by him being the third or fourth to the right or left of the one who actually produced the sound.

In the choruses of operas, an endeavor is made to have an agreeable aspect in addition to vocal qualities; and, as a beautiful voice is not always accompanied with a pretty face, it often happens that in the first row of a chorus they will place pretty supernumeraries, who, although not obliged to sing, open their mouths and make believe pronounce words, while in reality the singing is being done only by their companions in the rear. This fraud is very rarely detected by the audience.

If a man standing near a child should, without moving his lips, speak with a squeaking voice, while the child was making believe pronounce words, it might easily be believed that the words heard were being spoken by the child. It is possible to teach a dog to open his mouth and follow the motions of his master’s hand; and if the master be any sort of a ventriloquist, he can easily make believe that he has an animal endowed with speech.

The ventriloquist who, standing near his dummies, succeeds in keeping his facial muscles absolutely immovable, while his figures become animate and move their lips and seem to speak, produces such an illusion among the spectators by virtue of the acoustic principle that we have just noted; that is, the[167] difficulty that the ear experiences in determining the precise point whence emanates the sound that it hears.

It is to be remarked that the chief difficulty in the art of ventriloquism is to keep the countenance immovable, and to speak without causing any of the facial muscles to act.

The ventriloquist who talks with a dummy that is interrogating him, addresses his questions in an ordinary voice, articulates distinctly, and plainly moves his lips; but when the dummy answers, the ventriloquist’s face no longer contracts, and his lips scarcely part except to smile. The facial immobility preserved by him while he is really speaking, then, can be explained by recalling a few principles of grammar, which are merely applications of the physiology of the voice.

Articulate speech, which separates the language of man from that of the lower animals, is divided, as grammar teaches, into sounds and articulations. The sounds or vowels are made up of all the continuous and uniform noises that the vocal organs can emit. Thus a, e, i, o, and u are vowels, because they may be infinitely prolonged; a a a a a a, for example. There are a greater number of vowels than is usually admitted in writing; it is possible, in fact, to modify them to infinity, so to speak, by a slightly more open or more closed sound. They may be classified in the form of gamuts, each having a typical vowel, the entire corresponding series of which is but the result of a more and more pronounced contraction of the lips, without the tongue and other vocal organs having to undergo the slightest modification.

These type-vowels and their descending gamuts are shown in Fig. 2.

If, in pronouncing each of these vowels, we draw the base of the tongue toward the back of the throat, without changing the position of the lips or tongue, we shall obtain the nasal sound thereof. The chief of such sounds are:

an, nasal sound of a;
on, nasal sound of o;

then,

en, in nasal sound of é;
eun, un, nasal sound of eu.

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The vowels i and u have no nasal sounds, because of the back position that the base of the tongue naturally occupies in pronouncing them, and which is but slightly modified when we endeavor to give them a nasal sound.

What precedes may be called the theory of the vowels. From the standpoint of ventriloquism, we must remark that, in order to pronounce the vowels, no motion of the lips is necessary; but it will suffice to allow the latter to remain slightly parted in order to give passage to the sound—this being generally done by the ventriloquist through the aid of a smile, that seems to be provoked by the interest that he takes in the talk of his dummies.

All the modifications in the organs necessary for passing from one vowel to another, as in the diphthongs oa and aé, or when they suppress certain intermediate articulations, are easily obtained by the ventriloquist by the aid of the tongue and the interior organs of the mouth, without causing the lips and facial muscles to undergo the slightest motion or the least contraction; or, in other words, without any visible sign exhibiting itself to the eyes of the spectators. The pronunciation of the vowels, then, constitutes no difficulty for the ventriloquist. The same is not the case with the articulations or consonants, the pronunciation of some of which is a difficulty that the ventriloquist can overcome only by virtue of practice and skill, or again by an approximate pronunciation—the articulation difficult to pronounce without moving the facial muscles being replaced by another which gives nearly the same sound, but which is obtained with the internal vocal organs of the mouth.

The consonants may be classed by categories, according to the vocal organs employed for pronouncing them. In each category they are divided into strong and weak, and, as regards ventriloquism, they comprise two series. A classification of them is given in Fig. 3.

Upon examining this table, it will be seen that, in the entire first series of these consonants, the tongue, acting upon the pharynx, bearing against the teeth, or taking different shapes, can act and articulate without the aid of the lips, and without the necessity of the facial muscles contracting. The ventriloquist, then, will be able to pronounce any word in which none but these vowels and consonants enter, without moving his facial muscles.

The same is not the case with the consonants of the second series, that is to say, with the five labials, f, v, p, b, m. The ventriloquist’s art consists in pronouncing these without moving the lips or facial muscles. With a little practice it is easy to reach such a result with f and v, which may be pronounced by causing only the interior muscles of the lips to act; p and b, and m especially, present a greater difficulty, and we may say that, in most cases, ventriloquists who wish to keep their lips perfectly motionless pronounce none of these three consonants distinctly, but usually substitute for them a sound bordering on that of the letter n.

It is partly for this reason that ventriloquists succeed much better in imitating the language of children, or that of persons of slight education.

So, upon the whole, the illusion produced by ventriloquists is the result, primarily, of an acoustic phenomenon, the uncertainty of the sound’s direction,[169] and, secondarily, of a habit acquired of speaking without moving the facial muscles.

Those ventriloquists who, without accessories, have the power of throwing their voices almost anywhere, succeed therein by utilizing the same principle of acoustics that we have explained above. As for the exact point whence the sound proceeds, the ventriloquist usually takes care to show that by an expressive motion and by looking in that direction, and by designating it, too, with his finger, while his face expresses great fear, interest, or surprise. So the spectator easily persuades himself that the sound does really come from the exact spot that is thus pointed out to him in a seemingly unintentional manner.

The words are often pronounced very indistinctly by the mysterious voice, but the ventriloquist takes care, as a general thing, to render them intelligible by repeating them in his ordinary voice, by accenting them, and by commenting upon them. He thus persuades his auditors that these are the very words that they heard.

In order to produce a muffled sound that seems to come from afar or from an inclosed place, the ventriloquist arranges his tongue in such a way that its base, upon bearing against the soft palate, shall form a sort of diaphragm that allows but very little of the voice to pass. If, then, the ventriloquist articulates his words with a strong guttural voice, the sound will appear to come from the earth, from a grotto or cavern, or from a box, or cask, or closet. If, on the contrary, the tongue being in the same position, the ventriloquist speaks with a sharp voice, he will produce the illusion of a voice coming from the ceiling, or from some high place, such as the top of a tree or the roof of a neighboring house. But, in both cases, in order to effect the emission of this muffled, somewhat indistinct, voice, the ventriloquist keeps his lungs distended, and emits as little breath as possible in pronouncing.

Richerand, the celebrated physiologist, who had an opportunity of examining the ventriloquist Fitz-James, says: “His entire mechanism consists in a slow and graduated expiration, which is, after a manner, protracted, and which is always preceded by a strong inspiration, by means of which he introduces into his lungs a great volume of air, which he carefully husbands.”

As for the modifications to be introduced into the usual position of the organs in order to obtain the voices of aged people or children, hoarse or nasal voices,[170] the cries of animals, sounds of musical instruments, the noises of tools, and so forth, they are easily effected, owing to the mobility, perfection, and resources of such organs; and it is by practice and feeling his way that the ventriloquist comes to know them and repeat them, so as to obtain the voice that he desires, with certainty. Moreover, in order to get a good idea of the modifications that may be introduced in the voice by regulating the breathing, the opening of the pharynx, and the position and curvature of the tongue, it is only necessary to devote ourselves to this exercise for a few minutes, when the processes used by ventriloquists, and the illusions that it is possible for them to produce, will be easily understood. Perhaps, indeed, such an exercise will reveal to the experimenter that he has an aptness for ventriloquism that he was far from suspecting.

Puppets have been in use since antiquity, and when skillfully constructed and operated the effect is very amusing. The French painter M. G. Bertrand devised some very ingenious puppets, which he calls “animated models,” which he exhibited for a long time in Paris. When the characters make their appearance and walk and approach each other, they appear to be real. One of the most charming of the puppets was a violoncellist who bows, rubs resin on his bow, and plays a march. After the player has finished, he bows and repeats the piece for an encore. M. Bertrand’s danseuses are no less wonderful. Fig. 3 shows one of them while she is executing a difficult scene. The little puppets are about half life size, being twenty-two inches in height. They are suspended from the upper part of the theater by very fine wires fixed to a rubber spring. Left to itself the puppet is suspended about three feet from[171] the floor of the stage. It is from beneath that the operator holds it by means of wires attached to its feet, which keep it on the floor and make it walk, jump, or dance. Lateral wires are attached to the hands, and are manipulated from the side scenes. Each figure is built up on a skillfully wrought skeleton.

The fifth figure shows that the fundamental osseous framework is made of hard wood, and the articulations formed of steel springs. When this wooden[172] skeleton is made to dance upon the stage, it has the attitude of an animated being; all of the articulations operate of themselves, with perfect suppleness. The covering of tow and dress materials give the external human form. Our last engraving shows the clown, who, at the rising of the curtain, recites the prologue. He is capable of showing his own skeleton to the spectators and of saying, “This is the way I am made. Look at my framework!”

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By Henry Ridgely Evans.

Paris is the home of the fantaisiste. These rare exotics flourish in the genial atmosphere of the great French capital, and cater to the most critical, as well as the most appreciative, public in the world. No matter how trivial your profession may be, if you are an artist in your particular line, you may be sure of an admiring audience. To-day you are a performer in the cafés; to-morrow you tread the boards of some minor theater, and the journals duly chronicle your début, sometimes with as much elaborateness as they would “write up” that of a new singer at the Grand Opera. Two of the greatest entertainers in Paris to-day are Yvette Guilbert, chanteuse eccentrique, and M. Félicien Trewey—fantaisiste, mimic, shadowgraphist, and juggler. It is M. Trewey and his wonderful art I wish to introduce to the American reader. The clever Frenchman is one of the best sleight-of-hand artists in France, but his lasting fame has been made through his ombromanie, or shadowgraphy, the art of casting silhouettes with his hands, on an illuminated screen. These silhouettes are projected with marvelous dexterity of manipulation.

The idea of projecting the shadows of different objects (among others the hands) upon a plane surface is very ancient, and it would be idle to attempt to assign a date to the creation of these animals and classic figures, such as the rabbit, swan, negro, etc., that have served to amuse children in the evening since time immemorial.

Within a few years these rude figures have been improved, and the play of shadows has now become a true art instead of a simple diversion. The Italian painter Campi was one of the first who thought of adding new types to the collection of figures capable of being made with the shadow of the hands. He devised amusing forms of animals that delighted the school-children before whom he loved to exhibit them. His imitator, Frizze, imported the nascent art into Belgium, and it was in this latter country that Trewey got his knowledge of it.

Trewey was not long in discovering that ombromanie was capable of improvement, and, after patient exercise of his fingers to render them supple, he succeeded in producing new silhouettes, which are, each in its kind, little masterpieces.

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Trewey has made his hands so supple that he not only can form the most diverse figures upon a screen, but can also give them motion and life. The swan smoothing its plumage, the bird taking flight, the cat making its toilet, the tight-rope dancer, who, after saluting the public, rubs chalk on her feet before walking on the rope, are true wonders, and it is hard to believe that these perfectly accurate profiles are obtained solely by means of the shadow of the hands. The artist has thus far devised more than three hundred figures, and his inventive mind is leading him to get up new ones every day.

The better to initiate the reader into the art of ombromanie, let me take, for example, the dog’s head represented in Fig. 1 (No. 1). The ears are erect, the snout is thrust forward, and we conjecture that the animal has just scented a choice bit; in fact, he is snapping at it (No. 2). No. 4 shows us the efforts that he is making to swallow his prey, which is represented by the angle of the bent forefinger that moves in the mouth. After strong efforts, the mouth is seen to close (No. 3), showing the act of swallowing. A progressive motion of the hand shows us the swelling of the throat caused by the descent of the food in the œsophagus. One would imagine that he had before him the shadow of a genuine dog, so wonderful, natural, and accurate are the motions. After this laborious repast, we finally see the animal yawning voluptuously, the middle finger representing the tongue, which cleaves to the palate, and the general profile of the head expressing the completest beatitude.

It is very evident that, in order to reach such a degree of perfection, the artist must be naturally endowed with great manual dexterity. There are signs by which such dexterity is recognized, and an attentive examination of Trewey’s hand has enabled me to verify the laws laid down by M. Henri Étienne upon the native perfection of the senses. Thirty-five years of research have permitted M. Étienne, who has been continuously in contact, in shops, with Swiss watchmakers’ apprentices, experienced workmen, and artists even, to find a certain criterion by which to judge of aptitudes in different trades and several professions.

One day M. Étienne was present in the shop of a skillful master watchmaker, when there entered a young Frenchman, an ex-law student, who was desirous of apprenticing himself to the watchmaking trade. The neophyte, who was very intelligent looking, received a cordial reception. While pressing the hand of the future workman, a cloud passed over the placid face of the master-watchmaker. “What did you feel, then, in pressing the hand of that young man who has just gone out?” asked M. Étienne. “With hands like his we don’t make a watchmaker,” was the reply, and the prediction came true. It was as a consequence of this conversation that M. Étienne sought and discovered the following rules:

The characteristic of dexterity is shown in the first place by the curve of the thumb arched outwardly. This is an indispensable condition for the handling of the hammer. The blacksmith, who wields with his arm the heavy striking mass that he lets fall perpendicularly, without deviation, repeatedly upon the same point; the file-cutter, who strikes such regular blows upon the[176]
[177] chisel that no flaw is visible in the cut, so equal everywhere is the imprint of the tool—these and all superb workmen, all artists who shape white-hot iron with the hammer, who chisel the precious metals, who sculpture marble and stone, owe the exact precision in the force and accuracy of the blows that they give with the hammer to the suppleness of the first joint of the thumb.

A second characteristic of skillfulness is indicated by the faculty of reversing the metacarpal phalanges of the fingers, so that when the hand is extended it is convex. On the greater or less flexibility of all the joints, either at the base or extremity of the fingers, depend the dexterity and skillfulness displayed in work executed with the file, plane, or lathe.

The two characteristics mentioned above—the curved thumb and the peculiar suppleness of the fingers—are in most cases united in the same person. The more important of these is the first.

Trewey’s hand, reproduced by molding, figures in several English museums. It possesses the faculty of reversal of the phalanges to the highest degree, and the thumb, which is of wonderful suppleness, renders Trewey, as we shall see, the greatest service in the formation of his shadows. Let me add that his fingers, which are long and slender, differ very perceptibly in length, the middle finger, for example, exceeding the ring finger by nearly an inch.

In addition to the profiles of men and animals, the artist, by means of a few accessories, exhibits to us living persons playing amusing pantomimes. Here, for example (Fig. 2), we have a fisherman. A piece of cardboard, properly shaped and held between two fingers, forms the hat; the boat is a piece of wood held in one of the artist’s hands; a metallic ring holds the fish-pole against the thumb of the other hand, and it is opposite this latter, bent as shown in the figure, that we observe all the emotions of the fortunate fisherman, who, phlegmatic at first, and livening up when the fish bites, finally is triumphant when he has it at the end of his line. It is necessary to have witnessed all these little scenes in order to understand how, by means of his[178] fingers alone, the artist can evoke the laughter and applause of hundreds of spectators. Here, now (Fig. 3), we have a scene with two persons. It is a fight between a janitress and one of her tenants. As may be seen, the accessories are here very simple again.

To make the shadows sharp, the following things are indispensable: The source of light must be a single lamp inclosed in a projecting apparatus, throwing very divergent rays. The lens must consequently be of very short focus. The electric light or oxyhydrogen lamp necessary in a theater may be replaced at the amateur’s house by a lamp, or, better, by a wax candle, or, indeed, even by a common candle that gives very sharp shadows. The mirrors in the room where the exhibition is given must be veiled in order to prevent reflections, and all brilliant objects must be removed. When the oxyhydrogen lamp is used, the screen is placed ten feet away from the light, and the artist’s hands at three feet from the same, and consequently at seven from the screen. But it will be understood that there can be no absolute rule about this, all depending upon the scale of the figures. It suffices to recall the fact that the nearer the hand is brought to the light, the more the shadow enlarges and loses its intensity, while on bringing the hand nearer the screen, the shadow becomes sharper, but smaller and smaller. Fig. 4 shows Trewey exhibiting the scene of the preacher in the pulpit. The canopy is formed by the arm and the first phalanges of the fingers bent at right angles, while a block of wood affixed to the arm near the wrist forms the pulpit. In order that the preacher may appear smaller than the pulpit, he must necessarily be nearer the screen, and this explains the distance apart of the artist’s arms in the engraving, the screen being situated in front of the arm that forms the preacher. The necessary distances, however, are best determined by experiment.

Trewey’s appearance on the stage is very prepossessing. He is a man of commanding physique, with a jovial countenance, indicative of the comedian. He always appears in full court costume—dress coat, silk stockings, and pumps.[179] On his first appearance on the stage he wears a long Spanish cloak, which he removes before beginning his entertainment of juggling and sleight-of-hand. He is the past grand master of balancing feats, the startling nature of which causes one to hold his breath with dismay at such boldness and audacity. His dexterity in throwing cards is really extraordinary. I have seen him project these little oblongs of glazed cardboard from the stage of the Alhambra, London (the largest hall in Europe) to the farthest part of the top gallery. He also possesses great skill in the unique art of writing backwards any word or sentence chosen by the audience, and he is a lightning sketch artist of no mean ability.

“Tabarin,” or twenty-five heads under one hat, is a performance named after the inventor, a certain M. Tabarin, juggler, mountebank, and quack-salver, who used to frequent the quays of Paris during the early part of the eighteenth century. With the brim of an old felt sombrero, Trewey is able, by dexterous manipulation, to construct every variety of headgear, from the shovel hat of a snuffy-nosed French abbé to the headdress of a Norman peasant girl, to say nothing of the famous chapeau affected by the great Napoleon. It is not these varieties of headgear that astonish the audience, but Trewey’s facial interpretations of the different types of character assumed. His mobile features are an international portrait gallery, and we see represented in the “Tabarin” Irishmen, Scotchmen, Englishmen, Chinamen, and other nationalities. It is a facial pantomime of exceeding skill.

The Paris Figaro has described the work of this fantaisiste as “Treweyism,” and Illustration and La Nature never fail to send their staff artists behind the scenes to make sketches of the ombromanist’s latest creations. Robert-Houdin, in his memoirs, says, the excellence of an artist’s work must never flag, but continue to excite and stimulate public curiosity. Trewey realizes this to perfection. He has something unique and novel from week to week to present for the delectation of his audiences. He is the most tireless experimenter I have ever met on any stage, and gets up early and goes to bed late to think out new problems in the art amusante. I first became acquainted with this versatile artist in the summer of 1893, when he was playing a phenomenally long engagement in the music halls of London, and heard from his own lips the story of his early struggles and hardships before attaining eminence in his chosen profession. I quote the following, contributed by me to the pages of Mahatma, a very clever little periodical devoted to sleight-of-hand, jugglery, and natural magic:

“Trewey was born in Angoulême nearly forty-five years ago. His father was a machinist employed at one of the paper mills of the city, and desired the young Trewey to become engineer in the manufactory. An unexpected incident diverted Trewey’s mind from mechanics to jugglery. He was taken one day to the circus at Marseilles, and saw the performance of a conjurer. He was so delighted with the entertainment of the mountebank that he forthwith determined to become a professional prestidigitateur. Finding that he could not enlist the interest of his son in machinery, Trewey père sent him to a[180] Jesuit seminary at Marseilles to study for the priesthood. One day, after he had completed three years at the seminary, he returned home for a short holiday, and refused to return, whereupon his father sent him to work daily at the factory. During his sojourn at the school, Trewey exhibited his skill as an amateur juggler, and took part in the dramatic exhibitions given by the students from time to time. He kept up his practice while at work at the factory, and then one fine summer’s day, at the age of fifteen, ran away from home with a professional acrobat not much older than himself. The two boys gave performances in the cafés of the neighboring towns, and eventually Trewey succeeded in getting an engagement in one of the Marseilles music halls at the munificent salary of a franc a day. He had to give his own juggling entertainment several times a day, and appear in a pantomimic performance every night. In this same company was Plessis, afterwards one of the greatest of the French comedians. Speaking of this period of his interesting career, Trewey said to me: ‘It was the custom in French places of amusement, when I was a young and struggling entertainer, for the spectators to throw money on the stage to a successful actor. I carefully saved the coin obtained in this way until I was able to purchase two grand new costumes. These costumes and the popularity acquired enabled me to obtain an engagement at the Alcazar, the principal place of amusement in Marseilles.

“‘Other engagements offered themselves in quick succession after that, and I became a favorite performer in all the principal towns in the south of France, where I remained for three or four years. After a while I returned to the strolling branch of the profession, and started anew as the proprietor of a traveling pantomime and vaudeville company.

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“‘I traveled from one little town to another, playing various rôles including Pierrot and Cassandre, the clown and pantaloon of French pantomime; danced in the Clodoche, a grotesque quadrille; and took part in a comedy, in addition to giving my own entertainment. It was a bare living only that was gained in this manner for two years, after which an offer of an engagement came to me from Bordeaux. Here I was most successful, and made a hit with a number of new feats of balancing with bottles, etc., with which I had been busy for a long time perfecting myself. It was at this period I invented the ombromanie. An offer quickly came for an engagement at the Concert des Ambassadeurs, in Paris, and my success was complete. I stayed in Paris nine years, and since then traveled all over Europe—in Spain, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Russia, Great Britain, and, as you know, introduced shadowgraphy to the American public in 1893.’

“Trewey’s home in the Rue Rochechouart, Paris, is an interesting place to visit; it is crowded with apparatus and all sorts of new inventions intended for use in his conjuring entertainments. His scrap and memorandum books are unique in themselves and contain hundreds of sketches in water colors of juggling feats either performed by himself or by other artists. Under each drawing is a carefully written description of the particular act.

“‘What are you going to do with all this material?’ I once asked him. ‘I may publish a book one of these days,’ he replied, with a merry twinkle of the eye; ‘who knows? I’ve done worse things.’”

M. Caran d’Ache, the cartoonist and illustrator, got up a few years ago, at the Theater d’Application, at Paris, a special representation of Chinese shadows which were devised by him, and are so superior to anything that has previously been done in this line that he has been able to call them “French shadows,” in order to distinguish them from similar productions.

M. d’Ache takes pleasure in representing the military scenes of the first republic and first empire. He projects upon the screen an entire army, wherein we see the emperor with his staff at different distances amid the ranks. The defiling of the troops is astonishing, and one would think that he was present at a genuine review. A “Vision in the Steppes” is another series of pictures that represent the advent of the Russian army. The shadows entitled the “Return from the Woods” form a masterpiece as a whole, and the figures are so skillfully cut that the celebrities of the day who are passing in the Avenue des Acacias can be recognized. Two amusing specimens of this part of the representation are given in Figs. 2 and 3. These reproductions are much reduced, the real height of the figures being about eighteen inches.

Says a writer in La Nature, “We were not content to remain in the body[182] of the theater to witness the shadows, but requested M. d’Ache to admit us to his side scenes for the sake of our readers, and to initiate us into the processes of actuating his figures; for, aside from the artistic aspect, there is here a very interesting application of physics.

“The silhouettes, after being composed and drawn, are cut out of sheet zinc, which gives them great rigidity. The cutting is a very delicate operation and requires great accuracy. Some figures, such as those of cavalrymen, hussars, and dragoons of the grand army, have apertures in certain parts, and behind these is pasted colored transparent paper. In this way, the black shadows that move along the screen have certain parts in color, such as the plumes of the helmets and the horses’ saddles.

“A large number of the zinc silhouettes act through mechanism. At a grand review, to the order ‘Carry arms,’ all the guns are seen to rise in unison. The silhouette is provided with a series of guns properly arranged and mounted upon a rod which is lowered or raised by the action of a lever.

“Fig. 1 represents the back of M. d’Ache’s theater. The screen being brilliantly illuminated by an oxyhydrogen lamp, and the light in the body of[183] the theater being turned down, the silhouettes, in passing, project upon the screen a very strong shadow which the spectators perceive, but which is not visible from the side scenes. Each silhouette is taken from a large box by a man who places it in a groove at the bottom of the screen. Four or five operators suffice to keep the shadows succeeding one another without interruption. During the Epopée we witness great combats, the capture of redoubts, and terrible cannonading. Nothing is more amusing than the method of producing the effects of these epic contests. The cannons are provided with little fuses that an operator fires, and, at the same moment, the big drum of the orchestra imitates the noise of the cannonading, and a rattle of large size simulates the sound of the discharge of musketry. As for the smoke that the spectators perceive upon the screen, that is produced by the cigarette of one of the operators, who projects it at the desired place. The light of the shells is obtained by means of a wad of gun cotton lighted and properly projected.”

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By Henry Ridgely Evans.

The most sphinx-like problem ever presented to the public for solution was the “second-sight” mystery. As has been stated in the Introduction, the idea was an old one, having originated with the Chevalier Pinetti, a conjurer of the eighteenth century. On this subject the “Encyclopædia Britannica” says:

“In 1783 Pinetti had an automatic figure about eighteen inches in height, named the Grand Sultan or Wise Little Turk, which answered questions as to chosen cards and many other things by striking upon a bell, intelligence being communicated to a confederate by an ingenious ordering of the words, syllables, or vowels in the questions put. The teaching of Mesmer and feats of alleged clairvoyance suggested to Pinetti a more remarkable performance in 1785, when Signora Pinetti, sitting blindfold in a front box of a theater, replied to questions and displayed her knowledge of articles in the possession of the audience.”

Robert-Houdin invented a “second-sight” system under the following circumstances:

“My two children,” he says, in his memoirs, “were playing one day in the drawing-room at a game they had invented for their own amusement. The younger had bandaged his elder brother’s eyes, and made him guess the objects he touched, and when the latter happened to guess right, they changed places. This simple game suggested to me the most complicated idea that ever crossed my mind—‘second sight.’

“On the 12th of February, 1846, I printed in the center of my bill the following singular announcement:

“In this programme M. Robert-Houdin’s son, who is gifted with a marvelous second sight, after his eyes have been covered with a thick bandage, will designate every object presented to him by the audience.”

Houdin never revealed the secret of this remarkable trick, but plainly indicated in his autobiography that it was the result of an ingenious combination of questions that gave the clue to the supposed clairvoyant on the stage. One of the first to come forward with an exposé was F. A. Gandon, who wrote a work entitled La Seconde vue dévoilée, Paris, 1849. Robert Heller saw[185] Houdin give an exhibition of “second sight” in London. It was the idea of people at the time that the experiment was the result of animal magnetism, but the acute Heller thought otherwise, and he went to work to perfect a system that far exceeded any of his predecessors in the art, adding certain subtle improvements that made the trick all but supernatural.

Briefly stated, the effect is as follows: A lady is introduced to the audience as possessed of clairvoyant powers. She is blindfolded and seated on the stage. The magician, going down among the spectators, receives from them various articles which the supposed seeress accurately describes; for example, in the case of a coin, not only telling what the object is, but the country where it was coined, its denomination and date. In the case of a watch, she gives the metal, maker’s name, what kind and how many jewels in the works, and, lastly, the time to a dot. And the same with other objects, no matter what they may be. Nothing offered by a spectator seemed to baffle Houdin and Heller. Half-obliterated Roman, Grecian, and Oriental coins were described with wonderful ease and accuracy by the assistant on the stage; also secret society emblems and inscriptions thereon, numbers on bank-notes, surgical instruments, etc.

At a performance in Boston, described by Henry Hermon in his work, “Hellerism,” a coin was handed to Heller. He glanced at it for a moment and asked his assistant to name the object.

“A coin,” she quickly replied.

“Here, see if you can tell the name of the country, and all about it,” he next inquired.

Without a second’s hesitation she answered, “It is a large copper coin—a coin of Africa, I think. Yes, it is of Tripoli. The inscriptions on it are in Arabic; one side reads, ‘Coined at Tripoli;’ the other side, ‘Sultan of two lands, Sultan of two seas, Sultan by inheritance, and the Son of a Sultan.’”[186]

“Very well,” said Heller, “that is correct. But look, what is the date, now?”

“The date is 1-2-2-0, one thousand two hundred and twenty of the Hegira, or Mohammedan year, which corresponds to 1805 of the Christian era.”

Salvos of applause greeted the performers at the conclusion of the scene.

Mr. Fred Hunt, Jr., who was Robert Heller’s assistant for many years, wrote the following exposé of the trick for the London Times, soon after Heller’s death:

“In the years we were together, Heller was constantly enlarging and perfecting his system. He is now gone and has solved a greater mystery than that which puzzled so many thousands while he was on earth, and I believe that his sister, Haidee Heller, and myself are the only living persons in whom Robert Heller’s second sight is vested. Heller had so simplified this system as to embrace every variety of article classified in sets; one question, with a word or two added, sufficing to elicit a correct answer for ten different articles.

“The student must be first posted in a new alphabetical arrangement, with which he must familiarize himself as thoroughly as a boy in learning his primer. This is the most difficult part of the business, but when mastered thoroughly, it comes as easy as if the question were plainly propounded.

“This alphabet is as follows:

“For example, you want the initials or name in a ring. Say it is ‘Anna.’ By the alphabetical arrangement H stands for A, D for N. The explanation ‘Hurry up’ always means a repetition of the last letter, and again H will give the answer when put as follows:

“‘Here is a name? Do you see it? Hurry up. Have you got it?’

“Attention is paid only to the first letter of every sentence, and it will be perceived that the name of Anna is spelled.

“Again, take ‘Gazette,’ which is abbreviated in a phonographic manner in order to simplify the question. G is A, A is H, Z is ‘Hurry’ (not ‘Hurry up’), E is F, T is P. The question would be:

“‘Are you able to tell the name? Here it is. Hurry. Find the name. Please be quick.’

“Here you have ‘Gazet’ in short meter. The letters K, U, X, and Z being difficult wherewith to commence an interrogative sentence, the words ‘pray,’ ‘look,’ ‘see this,’ and ‘hurry,’ are used, as will be seen in the table.[187] Care must be taken not to begin a sentence with either of these words unless applicable to the word to be spelled. For instance, if ‘Xenia’ is required, X is ‘See this,’ E is F, N is D, I is B, and A is H. Thus the question:

“‘See this? Find it quick. Do hurry. Be quick. How is it spelled?’

“Again, for the initials U. S. you will say:

“‘Look. Now, then.’

“U is ‘Look,’ and S is N.

“If you want Kentucky named, thus the question:

“‘Pray name the State. Quick.’

“Pray is K, and Q is Y.

“After the alphabet we have the numbers, which, it will be seen, are easily understood after a little practice.

Numbers.

“‘Well’ is to repeat the last figure.

“Example: The number 1,234 is required; attention must only be paid to the first word of a sentence, thus:

“‘Say the number. Look at it. Can you see it? Do you know?’

“Or say the number is 100:

“‘Tell me the number. Hurry!’

“A rather difficult number would be 1,111. The question would be put in this wise:

“‘Say the number. Well? Speak out. Say what it is.’

“On a watch or greenback there are sometimes eight or nine numbers, which can be followed as easily as the above.

“The table of colors is as follows:

Colors.

“The solution of the numbers, as I have explained, will furnish the key. For example, the article presented is green; the question will be:

“‘What is the color?’ green being the sixth color in the list.

“Blue is wanted, and, as it stands third in the list, the word would be:

“‘Can you tell the color?’

“White is wanted, and, as it stands first in the list, the question is:

“‘Say the color.’

“Understand that the words explaining the numbers, as given in the list, are applied to the articles enumerated in each of the subjoined tables.

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The Metals.

The Setting.

“Take the metals, for instance. The metal presented is copper, which is fourth in the list. The question would be:

“‘Do you know the metal?’

“If steel, which is ninth in the list:

“‘Now, what is the metal?’

“Sex, countries, materials, fabrics, watches, are as follows:

Of What.

[This set to describe the sex, etc., of the pictures.]

Countries.

The Material.

The Fabric.

Watches.[189]

The maker’s name?

Of what company’s make?

[This is to tell the maker’s name of watches.]

“Miscellaneous articles are divided into nineteen sets, thus:

First Set.
What article is this?

Second Set.
What is this?

Third Set.
What may this be?

Fourth Set.
What is here?

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Fifth Set.
What have I here?

Sixth Set.
Can you see this?

Seventh Set.
Do you know what this is?

Eighth Set.
Look at this.

Ninth Set.
Now, what is this?

Tenth Set.
Tell me this.

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Eleventh Set.
I want to know this.

Twelfth Set.
Pray, what is this?

Thirteenth Set.
You know what this is?

Fourteenth Set.
Quick! This article.

Fifteenth Set.
Name this article.

Sixteenth Set.
Say, what is this?

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Seventeenth Set.
This article?

Eighteenth Set.
Playing cards.

Nineteenth Set.
Devices.

“It will be seen that the different articles are arranged in sets, numbering no more than ten. Each set has at the head a different question, worded very nearly alike, so as to make the audience believe that the same question is being constantly asked. The question at the head of the set, which is always asked first, is the clue to the set which contains the article to be described. Each set is numbered, as in the cases of the colors and metals, and the word conveys each particular article.

“For the first set the question is:

“‘What article is this?’

“This gives the clue to ten distinct articles. The next demand may be:

“‘Can you tell?’

“Which would be solution for ‘bag,’ it being the third in the list.

“‘Say the fabric.’

“The reply would be, ‘Silk,’ that being the first in the line of fabrics, and, as I have before stated, ‘say’ representing No. 1. If a leather bag, it would be: ‘Will you tell the fabric?’ ‘will’ standing for No. 5.

“A handkerchief is presented, and the question is:

“‘What article is this? Say;’ which explains that it is a handkerchief, as that is the first article in the list.

“‘Can you tell the fabric?’

“‘Cotton,’ cotton standing third in the list of fabrics.

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