Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography. Albert A. Hopkins
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 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.
“THE APPEARING LADY.”
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.
TABLE READY FOR THE APPEARANCE.
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 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 APPEARING LADY.
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 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.
DETAILS OF THE APPARATUS.
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 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 DISAPPEARING LADY.”
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.
FIG. 1.
FIG. 2.
FIG. 1.
FIG. 2.
The newspaper is provided with a trap, which is concealed by the printed characters (Fig.