Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography. Albert A. Hopkins
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.
MAGIC HARPS.
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. 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.
ÆOLIAN HARP EXPERIMENT.
CHAPTER IV.
CONJURING TRICKS.
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.
TRICK WITH AN EGG AND A HANDKERCHIEF.
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, 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.
TRICK WITH AN EGG AND HANDKERCHIEF.
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.
THE CONE OF FLOWERS.
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 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 CONE OF FLOWERS.
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.
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